


Awkward.

by boombangbing



Series: Direction [10]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Cunnilingus, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-11 12:42:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boombangbing/pseuds/boombangbing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The accidental dating life of two awkward scientists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This first part takes place in [chapter seven of _Destination_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/772557/chapters/1480758). I've set this as a chaptered fic because I'm hoping for this to end up of a collection of loosely connected moments of accidental dating awkwardness. I don't have a solid plan as of yet, but I do have an ending in mind.
> 
> And yes, I took the title from the MTV show _Awkward._ , which I have only seen two episodes of, but is clearly apropos for this pairing.

Jane is a pretty good friend, she thinks. She takes Darcy out to bars to get her mind off her troubles, listens to all of Darcy's many concerns about Steve, and wastes valuable working time on the whole endeavour. So if she talks a little too much about her research, Darcy can just suck it up for a couple of hours.

Her phone buzzes as Darcy wobbles off to the restroom, and she pulls it out to have a look. The message is from Bruce and she gets an odd kind of thrill in her gut as she opens it.

_can i come over latER?_

_Sure_ , she texts back, already planning to send Darcy home so that she can be back to her apartment before Bruce turns up. It takes a bit of doing, because when Darcy's drunk, she gets pretty whiny, but Jane manages it and gets home by one am.

Her apartment is a mess, and she does her best to tidy it up in her slightly drunken state, but the doorbell goes half an hour later, and she gives up on trying to scrape pasta sauce off a plate and goes over to buzz him in.

He's chewing on his lip when she opens the door, tugging at the bottom of his t-shirt nervously.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hello,” he says, his cheeks pink.

“Are you drunk?” she asks.

He closes one eye and smiles. “Yeah... Tony wanted to 'talk' and talking involves drinking, so...” He leans his head against the door frame and grins.

“I'm kind of drunk, too,” she says, and curls her fingers around the neck of his t-shirt, tugging him towards her.

He falls into her, sliding his hands down her back as their mouths meet. She runs her fingers into his hair and pulls tight, and Bruce presses his hands hard against her hips as she walks him into the room. He kicks the door closed with the heel of his foot and breaks the kiss to look back at it.

“Wow,” he murmurs, “that was really smooth.”

“It was,” she says, working her hands underneath his t-shirt to stroke at his sides. “Couch,” she says.

They collapse onto the couch, hands all over each other. Bruce is a pretty great kisser, and he definitely knows what to do with his tongue, despite Darcy's opinion that it's gross. He's not all... slobbery like some of the guys Jane has dated in the past. In fact, he's not anything like other guys she's been with. He isn't tall, or blond, or well-built, or a raging asshole. Really, aside from the asshole part, Steve is much more her type, and certainly not all her thoughts about him have always been innocent, but Bruce is really starting to grow on her. Maybe in no small part because of the kissing.

“I missed this, you know,” he murmurs, pulling back a little and resting his forehead against hers.

“What?” she says.

He presses a soft kiss to her mouth. “Kissing. When I was... not doing the interaction with others thing, I mean.”

“More than sex?”

“Yeah. Sex only lasts... well, about two minutes for me.” 

She shakes her head and laughs. He _definitely_ has more stamina than that.

“But with kissing you can keep going for hours. I mean, with chapstick.” He glances up at her, biting his lip. “In theory,” he murmurs, brow crinkling up nervously.

She traces her fingers along one of his side burns and smiles. “You know what I like?” she asks.

His brow starts to smooth out again. “What?”

She shifts a little, half in, half out of his lap, one leg thrown over his hip. “Cuddling.” She flushes a bit at the admission and shakes her head. “I'm such a girl.”

The lines around Bruce's eyes crinkle up. She likes that, the soft lines on his face that smooth out or get deeper depending on his mood. He leans forward and kisses her gently. “Cuddling is an equal opportunity sport, I think.”

“Well,” she says, regarding him for a moment. They've been spending more and more time together recently, but they haven't exactly ever just cuddled, separate from falling asleep after sex and waking up in the morning all tangled together in an approximation of spooning. Somewhere along the line, they made the subtle distinction from fuck buddies to friends with benefits, but she's not sure just how many benefits it entails. “I've got cheesecake in the fridge. Do you want to watch some late night movies and share it and... cuddle?”

Bruce bites the inside of his mouth and nods.

It takes them a while to figure out how to arrange themselves, where to put limbs and exactly how close they want to get to each other – which, considering that his dick has been inside of her on several occasions, seems kind of dumb – but they settle down after a while, Jane's legs in his lap, his arm around her middle. He's a little soft, and easy to cuddle up to, as it turns out, and despite a few minutes of awkwardly glancing at each other, his grip on her is solid, and she leans her head against his shoulder and sighs. At some point she falls asleep, and when she wakes again, hours later judging by the sunlight filtering through her drawn curtains, he's still there, the arm around her back slackened and resting along her hips, his other in her lap. He looks peaceful, his bottom lip jutting out in sleep.

She really has missed cuddling a lot.


	2. Chapter 2

When Tony rescued Bruce from death by even more hideous freak of nature than the Other Guy (and then they were both rescued by the rest of the team, because Tony hadn't planned everything out very well), Tony put the hard word on him again to move into the tower. Bruce resisted for a few weeks, but his only other option was Hotel S.H.I.E.L.D., and that was just bad for everyone involved, him and the agents alike.

A week after Steve had had pieces of metal pulled out of his gut (and Bruce already liked Tony, but the way he dealt with the situation was really amazing), Tony showed him around a newly fitted floor of the building.

Bruce was still kind of stuck on breaking his seven year dry spell and having sex twice in five days, with a good looking younger woman who he really kind of... liked, so he wasn't paying an awful lot of attention to what Tony was telling him. The room they were in seemed pretty bare and bland, and Bruce wondered if Tony was just bored and wanted someone to talk to.

“So... I brought you down here for a reason...” Tony said, faltering enough that Bruce started to pay more attention to his words. Tony never faltered.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, so... This is a Hulk-proof room, and by the way, General Ross got released without charge from prison.” He said the last part all in a rush, and took a large step back.

Bruce squinted at him. That fucking... That man could get out of any trouble life threw out him. Bruce almost wished he could have learnt something off him.

“You still with me, Bruce?” Tony asked.

“Fuck,” Bruce said tiredly, and rubbed at his eyes.

“Awesome, let's get hammered.”

So now, of course, he's living under the threat of Ross again, though Tony says that Steve was so offended by the ideals of the army being perverted that Bruce would have his very own super soldier going to bat for him – and Bruce knows that Ross has some kind of creepy hero worship thing going on with Captain America that was predicated on an image in his head of Steve being a perfect blond killing machine. Bruce can't deny that he'd get untold amounts of pleasure from Steve smacking Ross down. 

So there's that.

“Foster's been spending a lot of time around here,” Tony says, fiddling with an extremely expensive microscope. Bruce has to stop himself from telling Tony that he's going to break it – Tony paid for it, so he can break it if he wants to.

Jane has been visiting the lab quite a lot recently, to coo over and play with all the stuff Tony has kitted the place out with. Last time she came over, though, they ended up in the spacious bathroom, having sex against a floor length mirror, which made the whole thing seem ridiculously decadent and kind of embarrassing. Kind of more embarrassing. This is serious teenager territory they're getting into here.

“Yeah,” Bruce says in answer to Tony's question, “I think she likes the... equipment.” He smirks at the joke while Tony remains oblivious.

“Think I could poach her for Science?”

“Do you even have an astrophysics department?”

Tony shrugs, upending the microscope and swearing to himself as he scrambles to right it. “I could create one,” he says as he sets it back down and takes a careful step away, holding his hands out to it placatingly, as if it were a small, scared animal.

“You really want to hire her, huh?” Bruce kind of wonders if he knows, but from what he knows of Tony so far, the man isn't exactly discreet, and would probably have started wheedling Bruce for details as soon as he found out.

“I like to surround myself with people who are more intelligent than me, it makes me seem evolved and emotionally mature. I'm like Gatsby. Didn't like the movie, by the way.”

Bruce laughs. “Okay, well, Jane is pretty serious about staying a free agent.”

“Yeah...” Tony looks up at him thoughtfully. “You get on pretty well with Jane, huh?”

“Sure,” Bruce says, the years experience lying to the authorities keeping his face blank.

“Cool,” Tony says. “It's nice that you've got a friend to spend time with when I'm not around.”

“Yeah, because my social calendar revolves entirely around you,” Bruce says, and then pulls a face as Tony's eyebrows rise. “Okay, point.”

“You should invite her round for dinner sometime. Pepper likes entertaining when she doesn't have to get all dressed up for it-- hang on, I've got to take this,” he tags on the end, pulling his vibrating phone from his pocket and putting it to his ear. “Pepper, darling, we were just talking about you!” he says as he wanders off.

Bruce own phone buzzes in his pocket, and he pulls it out to read the text message.

 _Do you want to get lunch? I'm near the tower already._ Jane's message reads.

 _Yeah_ , he texts back, _I could do with leaving this building for a while. I'll meet you downstairs in ten?_

He waves to Tony on his way out, who is so wrapped up in talking to Pepper that he can barely manage to lift his eyes to look at Bruce. It seems like everyone around Bruce is crazily in love with someone.

Jane waves at him through the glass doors as he gets into the foyer. He waves back and goes out onto the street to join her. “What are you doing out here?” he asks as he gets past the sliding glass doors.

She shrugs. “I didn't want to have get through security and get a badge and have my retinas scanned and my blood taken and all that stuff that Tony wants.”

Bruce laughs. “Fair enough.”

She smiles, her nose wrinkling up. The sun is starting draw out freckles along her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. “There's a café over there,” she says, pointing across the street. “Want to get something to eat?”

“Sure,” he says, bumping his shoulder into hers as they walk.


	3. Chapter 3

Jane spent four months in Tromsø, Norway, and it wasn't such a bad place, despite Darcy's characteristic description of it as 'Buttfuck, Norway'. It was a very beautiful, she had nice accommodation provided, and the lab she was working out of was internationally renowned. She flew out there hours before the attack on New York began, and didn't find out about it until fifteen hours later, when they finally made it to Tromsø. Everything was over by then, New York left in devastation, Thor had been _and_ gone. She cried alone in her hotel suite, watching subtitled news.

She could have left. Flights into New York were cancelled for a week, but other airports were open, and she could have got back to the US a few days later. But, instead, she stayed on – it was a job, after all, and a good one at that, and she felt like she was spiting Thor. What was there to rush back for? Certainly not him, and Jane wasn't the kind of person to just skip out on her responsibilities. 

When she heard that Agent Coulson had died and been buried, she regretted her decision a little, but by then it was too late anyway.

Things have been pretty precarious since she's got back almost a year ago. She doesn't have a job, as such, though S.H.I.E.L.D. has brought her in to consult a few times and paid her way over the odds, just to keep her quiet. They eventually returned her research – for the second time – but her desire to pursue it had already waned considerably. So, she's left kind of floating in the in-between, at a loose end, which is something she was completely unprepared for, as it turns out. The last time she had a break was probably before kindergarten.

So, she's trying to be a new Jane. A shiny new Jane. A Jane who isn't boring, or a know it all, or a frigid bitch, or whatever else people have slung at her over the years. A Jane that sits outside fancy boutique cafés in New York, in the afternoon, sipping wine and eating a sandwich that had a toothpick in it.

“It's not going to last forever,” Bruce says. “You'll find something new.”

“Maybe,” she says. “I should really just make the most of the break while I've got it, but I've never been able to settle when I don't have something to do. I wish I was cool like you.”

Bruce laughs and almost launches his glass of wine into the road. “Jesus,” he mutters, grabbing hold of the stem to steady it. He glances up at her at her frowning face. “Wait, that's not a joke?”

She shrugs. “I mean, you're always so laid back...”

He pulls a face. “Jane,” he says, leaning in to her. “I'm the Hulk, I'm not laid back. And I'm definitely not cool, by any definition of the word.”

“You're always so calm, though.”

He shrugs. “Years of practice. I was so highly strung when I was younger.”

“More than I am?”

“Oh yeah. Yeah. And I was the _moodiest_ teenager. Teenage angst, thy name was Bruce. I hated everyone. Really put my aunt through a lot of shit.”

“Aunt?”

“Yeah. I, uh--” He frowns and tugs at his hair for a moment. “My aunt raised me. My... father's in prison.”

“Oh,” she says. She expects him to mention his mother, but he doesn't. “Oh,” she repeats.

“I'll tell you about it one day,” he says, “but... not today.”

“Sure,” she says. “Okay.”

He smiles. “Wanna go see a movie after this?”

“Yeah, I'd like that.”

-

They go to the movie, and then dinner afterwards, and finally end up near the tower at eleven, a little tipsy and getting kind of handsy with each other on the street.

“Do you wanna come up?” he asks, gesturing vaguely at the building. “Tony and Pepper have got a thing until at least midnight.”

“Um...” She looks up at the imposing building – Steve thinks it's ugly and she can see why – and nods. “Sure.”

Bruce nods to the person on the desk as he comes in and shows his ID to the guard to get to the private elevators. The guard lets her pass without a word, which surprises her.

“Tony's got a hierarchy – apparently I'm trustworthy enough to bring people into the tower.” He touches his thumb to a reader by the elevator door and it slides open. “After you,” he says, holding out his arm.

Bruce has a really nice room – it's large and airy, with a big bed and a huge bathroom. Apparently Tony's planning on turning a couple of floors into apartments, for whatever reason, but Bruce is just happy with what he's got.

He's also pretty untidy.

“Too long living as a bachelor,” he says, kicking a pile of clothes aside. “So, do you want to...”

“Take my clothes off?” she finishes, and he laughs. “I'll show you mine if you show me yours?”

Bruce is pretty solidly built, though he's small, small hands, not very broad shoulders, and he's kind of square-shaped, he doesn't have any of that v-shaped upper body thing that Steve's got going on. She's always gone with guys that looked at least vaguely like that, and they went for her too; she dated a lot of guys who were totally into how tiny she was in comparison to them. That always skeeved her out a little. She feels kind of evenly matched with Bruce, though, and it's a nice change.

Bruce drops down on his knees in front of her when she stands beside the bed. God, does he know what to do with his tongue... She buries her fingers into his thick hair and shudders, trying to portion at least a little bit of her brainpower to staying upright for the duration. Bruce presses a hand against her ass to help steady her and she clutches harder at his hair – she wonders if it hurts but he doesn't seem to mind. None of her other boyfriends went down her, not once. 

“Oh,” she says, as he flicks his tongue against her clit _just right_. “Oh, oh, _Bruce_.”

He groans a little as she pulls even harder at his hair, and does it again, until her thighs are trembling. She presses back against the edge of the mattress and bites her lip as she comes, toes curling underneath her.

He sits back and looks up at her as she collapses on the bed. He looks kind of smug.

“Good?” he asks.

She shrugs. “Hm... Okay. You want to come up here?”

“Yeah,” he says, stumbling up.

They fall back onto the bed, and when Bruce gets on top of her, she takes the opportunity to run her fingers through his chest hair. He grins and leans in to kiss her neck, his stubble scratching against her skin. She likes the feel of it, though she's already got beard burn from him a couple of times, and that's pretty hard to cover up in the summer. Bruce said he'd shave more, but that's kind of an exercise in pointlessness, the rate his hair grows.

He's rutting against her bare leg, grunting a little with each thrust. She tries to reach the night stand for a condom, but only manages to graze the edge with her fingertips. 

“This bed is too big,” she says.

“Mmhm,” he hums, rolling onto his back to reach the drawer of the night stand and grab the condoms. He rolls back and sits up. “Are you okay with...?” He nods vaguely downwards. “After...?”

“Yeah. You're just going to have to, uh... make me come again,” she says, as she starts to blush.

He raises his eyebrows and smiles.

The sex with Bruce is pretty great. Maybe it's wrong to be surprised, they're both adults after all, with at least twenty years experience between them, and he was in a long term relationship until a few years ago, but she's surprised nonetheless. Maybe because most of the time he looks like he'd prefer if a hole just opened up beneath him and swallowed him up, and right now he's sort of mouthing at her breasts and definitely giving that second orgasm of hers the old college try.

She hikes her legs up higher around his waist and tips her head back into the pillow as he groans into her neck. He presses his fingers against her clit and picks up the pace, until she comes again, hard, and Bruce follows her a minute later.

They stay pressed together for a little while, as they both catch their breath, before Bruce leans up and kisses her.

“Um,” he says.

“I should go wash up,” she says.

“Yeah, okay.” He pushes himself up, and rolls over onto his back, reaching down to deal with the condom. This is always her least favourite part of sex. The awkward clean up.

She snags her bra and underpants from the floor and slips into Bruce's spacious bathroom - she's pretty sure she could quite happily _live_ in this bathroom, so long as a little fridge was installed or something. She's doubly sure that Bruce could live in here, judging by the places he's told her about living in in the past.

She washes up and washes off what little make up she put on earlier, now that it's all smudged anyway, and tries to comb the knots out of her hair with her fingers. There's a hairbrush lying on the bathroom counter, but it's full of Bruce's curly black hair and she decides against it. 

It's twelve thirty, and she guesses she's going to have to get a cab home, because she doesn't really want to get on the subway while she still feels kind of achy and weird from having sex. She sighs at her reflection. Sexual encounters are always so _awkward_.

She steps back out into the bedroom, hoping that Bruce might be asleep and she'll be able to sneak out, but he's sitting up in bed, squinting at his phone.

He glances up at her. “Hey.”

“Hi,” she says, grabbing her t-shirt off the floor and beginning her hunt for her pants.

“Oh, are you... leaving?” he asks, blinking owlishly at her.

She stops, t-shirt hanging loosely from one hand. “Well, I mean... yeah?”

“Oh,” he repeats, shifting a little. She spots her pants crumpled up near the door. “Okay. You could... It's kind of late. You could stay. If you want to.”

“Um.” It's not like they haven't slept over at each other's places before, but it's always been a 'falling asleep after a drunken hook up' sort of thing, not a 'consciously deciding to sleep in the same bed together' thing. It is late, though, and she's not sure she even has enough cash on her to pay for the cab.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?” he repeats.

She drops her t-shirt back to the floor, and walks over to the bed.

“Oh,” Bruce says softly, and pushes the covers back for her to get in. 

She slips in beside him and clears her throat. “So,” she says.

He's twisting the sheets between his fingers, she notices, getting them all tangled. “So,” he echoes.

“See any good movies lately?” she asks.

He chuckles and rolls onto his side. “Wanna, uh... cuddle?”

“Okay,” she says, and shifts around until they're sort of spooning. It's a lot less comfortable than when they cuddled on the couch a few weeks ago. “Sorry,” she murmurs, “I'm not great at the sex... thing. You know, the during and the afterwards bits.”

He snorts, settling his arm around her middle more firmly. “Yeah, I could never figure that out either. But then I was kind of late to the game, so...”

“How late?”

“Oh, uh... Twenty seven,” he mumbles, hiding his face against her shoulder for a moment.

“Really?”

“Yeah...” he says, tipping his head back up. He's very cute, she thinks.

“Huh. Steve was twenty seven, too.”

“Steve?” He frowns. “Wasn't that... last year, though?” His eyebrows go up. “Oh. Oh, well, good for him for waiting, I guess.”

“Yeah, don't mention that to him, okay? I don't think Darcy probably wanted me to tell anyone.”

“Don't worry, I'm not big on talking about sex with the guys. Or talking in general...”

She smiles and shifts deeper into his arms. That's a little more comfortable. “I was eighteen, by the way. He was a football player. I know,” she tags on the end, “I don't know how that happened either. We were at a frat party.”

“I wasn't gonna say anything,” he says quietly and yawns.

“Tired?” she asks.

He yawns again. “A little. You gonna do the walk of shame while I'm out?” he asks, eyes already closed. His mouth twists a little.

“I'll wait till you're awake,” she says.

He sighs through his nose, fingers kneading against her rib cage. “Okay,” he says, “good.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sometimes Bruce just lies on his bed and closes his eyes, even in the middle of the day. He realises that he is neither old enough nor young enough to justify napping in the daytime, but in his defence, the bed is just _so_ comfortable and Bruce has spent _so_ long sleeping on hard floors and hard mattresses. When his phone goes, he groans quietly and rolls onto his side, flailing his hand at the night stand where the phone is. Is this what he's come to? So lulled by luxury that he can't even be bothered to get on his feet and answer his phone?

He should care about that, but he's far too comfortable. He reaches the phone on his third pass, and sees that it's Steve calling.

“Hey,” he says, flopping down on his back again.

“Hi,” Steve says. “I just wanted to let you know that I'm pretty sure Tony is going to try to set you up with someone...”

Bruce sighs. “How sure is 'pretty sure'?”

“Well, he told me he was going to. I told him he shouldn't and he said he was still going to.”

“Sounds about right.”

Steve hums his agreement. “Maybe you should just tell him that you're dating Jane. I mean, he's an asshole, but he wouldn't try to set you up with anyone else if he knew that.”

_Dating_. Bruce feels kind of odd about the word. “I dunno, me and Jane are... And Tony harasses me about stuff enough as it is.”

“I guess...” Steve murmurs. Sure, _Steve_ would admit it, he's a young, romantic kid who's completely gone for his significant other. Bruce is a little bit past that stage in life.

Jesus, since when did Bruce start thinking of twenty eight year olds as 'kids'?

“I'll see how it goes,” Bruce says, “so what are you doing?”

“Cleaning an oven.”

“Fun. You know, it's nice not having to clean anything myself any more. There's a robot for everything around here.”

“Yeah, but then you've gotta live in the same building as Tony,” Steve says. “Being separated from him by the East River is a distance I'm comfortable with.”

“You do have a point there.” The doorbell rings as he says it, and Jarvis pipes up.

“Sir, Mr Stark is at the door.”

“Thanks, Jarvis,” he says, pushing himself up with a Hulk-sized effort. “I've got to go, Steve, Tony's at the door.”

“Good luck,” Steve says with a laugh.

“So!” Tony says when Bruce opens the door. “I'm having a party tonight!”

-

The party is on the tenth floor, far below where Bruce's room is, so he can easily avoid it, and clearly Tony figured he would, because he's been planning the party for weeks and this is the first Bruce has heard of it. It's to celebrate the unveiling of Stark Industries new line of medical equipment, which is something that Bruce definitely supports, at least. Still, because of the subject matter, there are going to be a lot of scientists who Bruce used to know attending, and he's not altogether thrilled about the prospect.

“It's your coming out party,” Tony says as he chooses clothes for Bruce. It's 'casual yet fancy', apparently. “I mean, in the sense of débutantes, not the closet. Although wouldn't it be cool to have parties for that? Jarvis, make a note of that.”

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis says.

“Do you think it's a good idea for everyone to know where I'm living? Or that I'm alive?” Bruce asks, smoothing down the collar of his shirt. “Technically I'm still a fugitive...”

“Pfft,” Tony says, pulling his own jacket off and handing it to Bruce. “This'll go with your shirt. And look, if anyone tries to get into this tower without my permission, Jarvis'll shoot them on sight.”

“The tower is armed?” Bruce asks, glancing up at the ceiling nervously.

“I mean, only to maim,” Tony says. He picks up a blue tie and holds it up to the yellow shirt Bruce is wearing. “Tie or no tie?”

“I don't like ties,” Bruce says, “it's just something for someone to strangle me with...”

Tony grins. “I like you, Banner.”

The party gets started at seven, and Bruce stays in the corner where Tony leaves him for the first half an hour. No one gives him a second look.

“You look nice,” Jane says, coming up beside him.

“Hey,” he says, “I didn't know you were coming. You're wearing a dress.” He feels his cheeks warm at the stupid observation, but Jane smiles and swishes the bottom of her strapless purple dress a little. Her hair's all done up too, it looks nice. “I like purple,” he says.

“Me too. Think there'll be dancing later?”

Bruce glances at his feet and smiles. “Maybe. Tony took lessons, you know. Came top of his class in high school, apparently.”

“I am not surprised,” she says.

“I think Tony's gonna set me up with someone,” Bruce blurts out. He's kind of wondering, maybe a little, if Tony is planning to set him up with Jane. It would certainly make some things easier.

Jane's mouth gets very small for a moment. “With who?”

He shrugs. “I dunno.”

“Well, I-- oh, here he comes,” Jane says, nodding to behind Bruce.

Bruce glances around as Tony comes towards them, and his heart maybe sinks a little when he sees that there's a woman with him. He guesses that if Tony _had_ tried to set him up with Jane, it would have led to a lot of awkward conversations, and Tony probably thinks, like everyone except maybe Darcy and Steve, that Jane's waiting on Thor to reappear. Which. Maybe she is. He looks back at her and grimaces.

“Bruce! There's someone I'd like you to meet!” Tony says, tapping him on the shoulder.

Bruce sighs and turns around. “Hey, To--”

“Oh my God, I thought you were _dead_ ,” the woman with Tony exclaims, throwing herself at Bruce and giving him no choice but to hug her back.

“Um...” he says.

“So, I guess you already know each other,” Tony drawls.

“ _Um_...” Bruce repeats. The woman laughs and steps back, tipping her face up. He blinks. “ _Jan_?”

She grins. “Took you long enough!” She gives him another squeezes, and he pats her on the back.

He pulls back after a second and looks over at Jane, whose face is unusually blank. “Jane, this is Jan. Jan... Jane,” he says, chuckling a little. “Jan's dad was my PhD thesis advisor.” He looks back at Jan. “How is Vernon?”

Her brilliant smile dims. “He passed a while back.”

“Oh God, really? I'm sorry. I'd really have loved to...” He sighs. He hadn't even thought about Vernon in _years_ , but he guesses that this is what you get when you disappear without a word.

“Jane! I've got a business proposition for you,” Tony says, sailing past and taking Jane by the arm. She waves at Bruce as she's dragged away, and he waves back.

“Should we... find somewhere to sit?” Jan asks.

“Huh?” He shakes himself and looks back at her. “Oh, sure, yeah.”

They find a seat on a couch in a less busy part of the tower's vast, open plan 'entertaining' floor. People seem to be recognising him now, but no one actually approaches, just occasionally gesture at him in very conspicuous sorts of ways.

“So... how long's Vernon been gone? If you don't mind...”

“It's fine,” she says. “It was five years back now. He died in a lab accident.”

“Jesus,” Bruce murmurs. A waiter comes by with a bunch of glasses on a tray, and Bruce leans over and snags one. “Want one?” he asks Jan.

“Please,” she says, and takes the glass he offers. “You know, everyone thought _you'd_ died in a lab accident.”

“Yeah,” he says, and takes a sip of his champagne. Sometimes he thinks he died in that accident. Maybe this is just some twisted form of purgatory.

“Just 'yeah'? That's all you've got for me?” she says.

He nods. “Yeah. So, how do you know Tony?”

“Oh, you know, moneyed families go way back. Me and him had the same water polo instructor. Way different years, obviously.”

“'Water polo'?” he repeats.

She laughs. “Yeah.”

“We come from very different worlds...” he murmurs.

“So, how do you know Tony then?” she asks, eyes sparkling with laughter. From what he remembers of her when she was a teenager, she was always laughing. The van Dynes always seemed so happy, it kind of made his heart hurt.

“Oh, we're just, uh... He... hired-- I work here...”

“Here in the tower?” she asks.

“Yeah, in... Science,” he says. It's such a fuck off job, how does he even explain it? Technically Tony is going to pay him 'per invention', but his room, board, and food is provided, so it's not like he really has any impetus to work, and Tony doesn't seem anxious to push him.

“So, you're his employee? Because you don't really seem sure.”

“No, I am. I'm... employed.”

“Good for you,” she says with a smile.

He smiles. “So, what are you doing these days?”

“Oh, living off my family's money, you know. I run a couple of charities. Travel a lot.”

“Me too,” he says. “The travelling thing, not the charity thing. Although I would like to.”

Her eyebrows draw together a little. “So, Bruce, where have you been for the last seven years? Why didn't you let anyone know that you weren't dead?”

He puts his champagne flute down on the ground and starts picking at his nails. “Well, it was in my best interests that everyone think I was dead. It still _is_ , really, but I guess that ship has sailed.”

“Piss off the IRS?”

He shakes his head. “I wish.”

“The law?” she says. 

“Kinda...” 

“Are you...” Her eyebrows shoot up, and she straightens her back, champagne spilling down her wrist. “Are you one of the...” She leans in and lowers her voice. “ _Avengers_?”

“I, uh...”

“Are you Thor?”

He barks with laughter. “No, I am definitely _not_ Thor.”

“Are you the one with the crossbow? Archery is so in right now!”

He shakes his head, and she frowns. “Okay, so you're not Iron Man, or Captain America, and the other one's a girl, so...” She looks at him, frown smoothing out into a sad expression. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he says.

“How did that...?”

“Lab... accident, gamma radiation exposure.”

“How? My dad worked with it for years.”

He shrugs. “It wasn't just gamma, there was other stuff mixed with it. I... I did bad things. I created a bad thing for... someone. Karma swung round and bit me on the ass.”

“Are you okay?”

“What's 'okay'? I'm... alive. I got a place to sleep, food, some really good friends. I guess I'm probably better off now than I was before the exposure.”

She looks at him with wide eyes. This is why he avoids people from the past: _'how are you?' 'I'm a part time monster. And you?'_ “Okay. Wow. This is not how I expected this evening to go, honestly.”

“Things rarely go the way they're expected to when I'm around,” he says.

“Same here.”

He picks at his nails for a little while – anything to do with his personal life is always a weapons-grade conversation stopper – before lifting his head. “Tony was trying to set us up, I think.”

“Yeah, I got that,” she says, smiling. “I've just, uh, had a bad break up, though, so...”

“Yeah, I'm kind of seeing someone already...”

She nods. “I did used to have a big crush on you when I was a teenager, though,” she says.

He grimaces. “Oh God, no, why?”

She laughs. “Well, in my defence, I went to an all girls school, and you were the only boy I saw regularly from ages sixteen to eighteen. And you _were_ very cute.”

“Ugh,” he says, rubbing his hands over his face.

“And you're still bringing it,” she adds, laughing as he runs his fingers through his hair in exasperation.

“Let's talk about something else...” he says.

The party clears out at midnight, and Bruce walks Jan to her car. She kisses him on the cheek, gives him her phone number, and tells him that maybe he should call sometime, if he feels like it. He waves at her as the car pulls away, and wonders if Jane already left. He lost track of her about half way through the party. 

“Struck out?” Tony says, throwing an arm around Bruce's shoulders and stumbling into him.

Bruce looks around at him. “I know you meant well, but I'm really not looking at the moment. Anyway, Jan just broke up with someone.”

“That's why I invited her!” Tony says, waving his arms to punctuate his point. He rests his chin on Bruce's shoulder and sighs. “I really thought that might work out.”

“Sorry.”

Tony huffs. “You should be.”

“Tony!” Pepper calls from a couple of feet away. She's taken her shoes off, Bruce notices, and looks a little merry herself.

Tony pulls away from Bruce without a second thought, leaving Bruce standing in the vast driveway outside Stark Tower. The whole bottom of the building is lit up, so despite the time it's still light, and there's a cool breeze that feels nice after how hot it's been the past couple of months. Around the back of the building, there are gardens that are completely at odds with how futuristic the tower itself looks, and Bruce decides to take a walk around them. He doesn't really feel like going back upstairs.

There are benches throughout the garden, each stationed in front of some kind of water feature, and as he looks around, he sees a figure sitting on one of them, the back of her strapless purple dress facing him.

“Hey,” he says, stepping over to sit down beside her.

“Oh!” she exclaims, jumping a little. “Jesus, I didn't even hear you coming.”

He smiles. “Enjoy the party?”

“Eh... Not really. I wish I hadn't worn this stupid dress.”

“Why? You look beautiful in it.” Which is what he should have said earlier, instead of saying he liked the _colour_ like a five year old.

Her cheeks flush, and she drops her gaze to the softly bubbling fountain for a moment. “Thank you. But everyone kept looking at these--” She cups her breasts, pauses for a second, then drops her hands to her lap. “Instead of my, uh, face,” she finishes quietly.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

“And I don't know _why_ I put my hair up like this,” she continues, voice getting louder again as she pokes had her elaborate up-do, half of which has come loose. “I followed instructions online and now I can't find all the damn bobby pins I stuck in there.”

Bruce laughs, and she turns to glare at him. “It's not funny,” she says.

“I'm sorry,” he says again, and raises his hands to her hair. “Do you want me to...?”

She tips her head towards him. “Sure. Thanks.” 

He starts pulling the pins out, leaving them in a pile on the bench, and Jane is quiet for a couple of minutes before she asks, “So, where's Jan?”

“She went home,” he says.

“Really? You didn't want to...?” She twists her fingers together in her lap and sighs.

“No,” he says. “I'm not... We're already...” He clears his throat. “And anyway, Jan is too young for me.”

“How old is she?”

“About... thirty three, I think?”

She turns her head slightly to raise an eyebrow at him. “I'm thirty three.”

“Yeah, but... when I was working on my thesis with her father, she was sixteen, so she's always going to be sixteen to me.” He finishes pulling the pins from her hair, and runs his fingers through it so that it falls in curls around her shoulders. “Do you wanna... sneak back up to my room in the service elevator? We could... dance.” Wow, smooth moves there, Bruce.

He still has his hands in her hair, and she looks kind of sad when she looks up at him. He leans over and kisses her gently. “I didn't want to get set up with anyone,” he murmurs.

She smiles a little and glances towards the front of the tower. “Are you sure we can get up there without getting caught?”

“Yeah, everyone's drunk, they're not going to notice.”

“Okay,” she says, wrinkling up her nose as she smiles. “You know, before a couple of months ago, I'd never snuck into a boy's bedroom.”

“I'm hardly a boy.”

She ruffles her hand through his hair. “You've still got all your hair, that's a start.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I based Jan's father being Bruce's thesis advisor on the fact that Vernon van Dyne [created a gamma ray projector](http://marvel.wikia.com/Tales_to_Astonish_Vol_1_44), and Bruce's specialisation, I'm guessing, was gamma radiation.
> 
> Jane's purple dress is based entirely on the dress [Natalie Portman wore in _No Strings Attached_](http://i.imgur.com/sHQ30bA.jpg), which this fic ironically is kind of similar too, though I didn't think of that when I started writing it and I haven't actually seen the movie...


	5. Chapter 5

On Monday morning she wakes up with a tickle in her throat. It gets worse throughout the day, but she ignores it, because it's Monday and she didn't get much sleep the night before.

By Tuesday morning, she's in no doubt that she has the flu. Bruce texts her about going out, and she just manages to type out: _can't flu_ before falling asleep on the couch. When she wakes up to her doorbell being rung, it feels like the world is ending. She rolls off the couch and stumbles over to answer the entry phone. 

“ _Hello_?” she says irritably.

“Um... it's me,” Bruce says, then adds, “Bruce.”

She groans and buzzes him in without a word, unlocks the front door, and retreats back to the couch. Not that it's much better – everything aches the same, and her head and nose and throat are all congested. When he knocks on the door a couple of minutes later, she sighs.

“It's open,” she calls, her face buried in a cushion. She hears the door open and close and lifts her head again. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says, shuffling his feet by the door. “I, uh, I didn't mean to disturb you, but I called and you didn't answer, and I... was worried,” he mumbles. He holds up a bag that he has in his hand. “I brought you some stuff.”

“Ugh,” she says. “What did you bring?”

He comes over and kneels down beside the couch. “I picked up some Gatorade--”

“Ugh, I hate Gatorade, I don't want to drink that,” she mutters.

“I know, but you've got to stay hydrated, and you probably haven't had much to eat or drink, have you?”

“Ugh,” she says for a third time, putting her head back on the cushion.

“I also got you tissues and Advil,” he says.

“Gimme,” she says, waving her hand blindly at him.

He chuckles. “Okay, okay. I'll give you them _if_ you drink the Gatorade.”

She sighs. “Fine,” she mumbles into the cushion.

Bruce helps her sit up, and she screws up her face as she drinks the disgusting drink. Bruce laughs at her as he does the tidying up that she couldn't force herself to do the night before, collecting clothes from the floor and doing the dishes. He makes her a couple slices of buttered toast and insists that she at least has a couple of bites.

“You probably shouldn't come too close to me,” she mumbles, laboriously chewing a corner of the toast. “You don't wanna get this too.”

“I got a pretty good immune system,” Bruce says with a smile, “I'll be fine.”

She doesn't even make it through half a slice before she feels too nauseous to finish. She sits on the couch and pouts while Bruce washes up the plate and then encourages her to drink some more Gatorade.

“I feel disgusting,” she mutters, “I need a shower. Everything hurts. I don't want to get up.” She blows her nose and tosses the tissue into the trash can that's sat beside the couch before going back to pouting.

Bruce smiles a little and comes back over to her. “C'mon,” he says, holding his arms out.

“What? What are you doing?” she asks as he kneels down.

“I'm going to... carry you to the bathroom?” he says, looking uncertain.

She screws up her face – she's pretty sure that she isn't going to get there any other way. “Don't drop me,” she says.

He threads his arms around her back and the backs of her legs and fumbles for a grip for a couple of seconds. “I'm not going to drop you, what do you weigh, ninety pounds?”

He swings her up into his arms and stumbles for a moment, but catches himself and smiles at her.

She sniffs. “One oh five.”

Once she's been deposited in the bathroom, he helps her get out of her disgusting, sweaty pyjamas. It's hideously embarrassing, but he just drops them into the laundry basket without so much as a raised eyebrow and then leans into the shower to turn it on for her. She resists the urge to try to cover herself up – it's nothing he hasn't seen before, and she's the only one with stupid body issues here.

She gets into the shower and sighs at spray of hot water. The drumming of water on her skin hurts, but at least she's getting clean. She picks up a bottle of shampoo and it promptly slides out of her fingers and hits the floor of the shower cubicle. If her stupid apartment came with a bath instead of just a stupid cubicle, she could sit down, but it _doesn't_ and now she's going to have bend down and get the stupid shampoo and stand here and wash herself and she thinks she might be about to cry.

“Okay,” Bruce says softly, and retrieves the bottle before pulling his socks off and half stepping in the shower. He squeezes out some shampoo into his hand and lifts his hands to her hair.

“You're going to get wet...” she mumbles.

“It's fine,” he says, and starts washing her hair.

She manages to run her sponge over her body herself, mostly because it's far too embarrassing to ask someone to wash her armpits, and Bruce rubs some conditioner into her hair and washes it out gently.

When she gets out of the shower, Bruce wraps her towel around her and smiles softly. “Where do you keep your clean pyjamas?” he asks.

“Wardrobe in the bedroom, top shelf,” she says, and sways on her feet. Showering really took it out of her.

Bruce ushers her into the bedroom and sits her down on the bed while he digs out underwear and pyjamas. He helps her put them on and climbs on the bed to dry her hair. Everything hurts, including her hair getting tugged, but he's as gentle as possible, and she feels pathetically grateful that he came over.

“Hey,” he says, once he's finished with her hair and she can barely keep her eyes open. “Do you have any, uh, tops I can wear?”

She looks at him – he's pretty soaked, one half of his blue shirt darkened with water. “Um... I have an oversized Culver sweatshirt in the wardrobe,”she says. She finally got around to throwing out Don's old clothes when she moved, she didn't think she'd have any more guys who wanted to borrow them.

He digs it out, strips out of his shirt, and pulls the sweatshirt on, before coming back over to the bed and hustling her under the covers. “Get some sleep,” he says, running his fingers through her hair.

She scoots down and grabs her teddy bear Winston from where he's stuffed between her pillows. She normally hides him when Bruce or anyone else comes over, because it's embarrassing, but she's sick and she needs her bear. 

Bruce smiles and sit down beside her and, after a moment's hesitation, she scoots over and rests her head on his leg. “Are you going to stay over?” she mumbles.

“I'm not going anywhere,” he says.

-

She wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, and finds that she's drooled all over Bruce's pant leg.

“Ugh,” she mutters as she pushes herself up. Her vision swims and her stomach roils unhappily.

Bruce snuffles and opens his eyes. “Sleep well?” he mumbles, voice rough.

“Okay, I guess...” she says, and wipes her hand across her mouth. “I feel sick.”

“I'm sorry,” he murmurs, leaning forward and stretching out his arms with a strangled grunt.

She rubs her hands through her hair, which has already gone back to being greasy, and shifts to get up. Her stomach shudders even more unhappily at the motion, and she gags.

“I think I'm going to be sick,” she mutters, and Bruce makes a sympathetic sound as he rubs his eyes. “No, I mean I really think I'm gonna puke,” she adds.

“Oh,” he says, as she bolts for the bathroom.

He follows her in as she makes good on her word, and it's so fucking humiliating to have him see her like this, especially when he kneels down beside her on the cold, tiled floor and holds her hair back from her face as she heaves. God, he's just her fuck buddy, this is not the image of herself she wanted to project. Not that the image she's been tending thus far has been all that elegant or worldly, but at least it didn't involve clutching a toilet bowl in the middle of the night.

She eventually sits back and sighs, looking down at her lap. “Sorry,” she mutters, “that was really gross.”

Bruce chuckles. “I've looked after sicker people than you,” he says.

She rubs her nose and sniffles – ugh, now her nose is starting to run again. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, you know that I worked as a medical doctor for a little while, right? I've seen some disgusting things. Honestly, I saw pretty disgusting stuff as an undergrad alone.”

She smiles a little and looks up at him. He looks pretty tired, but he's being so freaking nice to her, she kind of wants to cry. God, she _hates_ being sick.

“Let's get you back into bed,” he says, pulling himself up with a grunt and a grimace, and holds his hands out to her. “I'll get you something to drink, you should stay hydrated.”

“No more Gatorade,” she says, “I'll just throw it back up.”

Bruce laughs and kisses the side of her head. Her heart jumps a little.

-

She sleeps on and off for the next few days, with interruptions of food and water and thermometers from Bruce. He brings her food that she's pretty sure she didn't have in her cupboards, so he must go out, but he's there every time she's awake, and by the time she's better and ventures out into the living room, Bruce has stayed with her for five days. Everything is clean and tidy, and the laundry's been done, and she has a lot more food in the fridge than she did before she got sick.

“Where did you tell Tony you were for most of the week?” she asks.

“Off meditating somewhere,” he says, and grins. “I might have intimated that living with him was the cause of needing to go off on a 'retreat'.”

Jane smiles and starts fiddling with the drawstrings of her pyjamas bottoms. “Well, thanks for... looking after me. It would have really sucked to be on my own feeling like that.”

“You don't have to thank me,” he says, “You're my... friend.”

“Yeah, um, yeah,” she murmurs.

“Oh,” he says, “and, um, I had to... I kinda, I mean...”

She raises her eyebrows at him and he chuckles. “Your mom called and I... answered.”

“You did? Why?”

“Well...” He shifts uncomfortably. “She called your cell about six times in two hours, and I didn't want to wake you up but I thought I might have been important.”

“Was it?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

Sounds like her mom. “So, what did you tell her?”

He presses his fingers to his eyebrow and pulls a face. “I said you were sick and that I was a... friend. She seemed pretty suspicious, though.”

“Yeah, she's like that. Well... okay, I'll call her up and see what the damage is.”

“Okay,” he says, and shifts a little. “I guess I should get going home.”

“Okay,” she echoes, and after a couple of awkward, abortive movements towards each other, they manage to hug and say goodbye. Jane stays at the door for a few minutes, contemplating her very tidy apartment. Bruce might be messy in his own space, but he's a pretty good house guest.

She looks over at her phone on the couch and sighs – she may as well get the awkward maternal phone call out of the way now. Jane hasn't exactly told her mom about Thor, although she does know that Jane was involved in the incident in New Mexico. As far as her mother is concerned, Jane hasn't had a date since Don, four years ago, and her mother never thought very highly of him. Jane wonders what she'd think of Bruce.

-

A couple of days later, she gets coffee with Darcy near Stark Tower. Steve is up there having one of Tony's inventions tested out on him, and Jane is debating whether or not to go up and see Bruce.

“I haven't seen you in ages,” Darcy says, “where've you been?”

“Sick,” Jane says, taking a sip of coffee. She still doesn't feel totally right. “I had the flu.”

“Aw,” Darcy says, “you should have called me. I could have brought soup.”

“I don't like soup,” Jane says, patting at her mouth with a napkin. “Anyway... Bruce came over.”

Darcy widens her eyes. “Oh, did he now? How many times?”

Jane clears her throat. “Just the once,” she says, and Darcy raises her eyebrows. “He just... didn't leave for five days.”

“Five days?” Darcy repeats.

“Mmhm,” Jane murmurs.

“So, he came over and looked after you, basically?”

Jane nods.

“Uh huh,” Darcy says. “You know, that's not just boyfriend territory, that's _good_ boyfriend territory, maybe even _great_. You know how many of my boyfriends looked after me when I was sick?” Darcy's in full flow now, so Jane just sits and waits it out. “One. _One_ boyfriend, and I married that boy with extreme prejudice.”

“Okay,” Jane says.

“I mean, I'm not saying you should _marry_ Bruce, but I am saying that I think that considering what a terrible sick person you are, it's a big point in his favour.”

“I'm not that bad of a sick person...” Jane mutters.

Darcy waves her hands. “Really? Remember who looked after you when you got that really bad cold the first week in New Mexico? Yeah, that was me, and you whined _constantly_. I mean, I love you, Jane, but you were a stranger to me then, and I almost booked a flight back to Virginia on the basis of that alone.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Jane grumbles. “I'm a terrible, whiny person to be around.”

Darcy leans forward. “True, but clearly Bruce doesn't think so.”

Jane slumps in her seat. “ _Ugh_ ,” she mutters.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okaaay, _well_. This one chapter is longer than all the other chapters combined, at 10,000 words. I swear to God I didn't see this getting over 3,000 but... such is life.
> 
>  
> 
> **Warning: discussion of past abuse and suicide attempts, along with something that _looks_ like suicide, but isn't.**

She knew she was buying too much stuff at the grocery store before she even got her card out, but she really couldn't decide between the two bottles of Sunny D and three bags of frozen French fries, so she stuffed everything in her canvas bags, feeling good about saving the Earth, and dragged it all the four blocks from the supermarket to her apartment. 

She's sweating and panting as she gets into the building and braves the stairs because, what do you know, the elevator is broken.

“Miss, miss, let me help you with those,” a man's voice calls as she's one flight away from her floor.

She rolls her shoulders and looks back. There's an older man at the bottom of the stairs, with an _extremely_ impressive moustache. She hasn't seen him before in the building before, but people are moving in and out all the time, so she smiles and nods.

“Thanks,” she says, “I think I overestimated my upper body strength.”

He comes up the stairs towards her. “Well, I can't bear to watch a woman struggle,” he says, and reaches out to take a couple of bags from her.

“Uh, okay,” she murmurs, giving him the bags. “So, are you new to the building?” she asks as they start climbing the stairs again.

“Oh, just visiting someone,” he says.

They get to her door a couple of minutes later, and she starts digging around in her pocket for her keys. “Thanks so much for the help, Mr...?”

“Ross,” he says, and she frowns. Ross? Like Elizabeth Ross...? “Dr Foster, we need to talk.”

She turns around and it strikes her for the first time that he is very tall, as tall as Steve but carries it differently, more... threatening. Maybe threatening isn't the best word, but he has a presence, and it's not a very nice one. “Uh... okay, do we know each other?”

“We have a mutual... acquaintance. Banner.” 

Fuck, she thinks, fuck, fuck, _fuck_. This is Dr Ross's father, and they've never talked about it head on, but she knows that the guy had it out for Bruce. She can just imagine this guy, towering over Bruce, using his size to intimidate.

She pulls herself up to her full height, tipping her chin up. “I've got nothing to say to you.”

“No, but I have something to say to you. I know that you and Banner are friends. I know that Banner stayed with you for a whole week. I know that he'll kill you one of these days, probably sooner rather than later.”

She flinches. “I-I want you to go. Or I'll... call the police.”

“Miss Foster,” he says, and her lip twitches. “I'm an army general. Go ahead and call the police.”

“Well,” she says, reaching out and pulling her bags from his grip. Her hands are shaking, but she gives the bags a sharp tug and he lets go. “I know a guy in the army too. He's only a... _captain_ , but...”

He blinks slowly. “Tell Banner I called.”

She doesn't reply and watches him walk away before she fumbles with her keys and gets into the apartment. Her hands are still shaking, and she drops her groceries to the floor and almost drops her phone too as she pulls it out of her pocket. She wavers on who to call, but decides to start with Steve.

“Hey, Jane,” he says cheerfully. “Can't get hold of Darcy?”

“No, I'm-- I...” she stammers and swallows heavily.

“Is something wrong? Are you okay?” he asks gently.

“General Ross was just in my building. Um, he... he's been watching me. Bruce. Both of us.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “Tell me exactly what he said.”

“He said that... he knew that me and Bruce were friends, and that he, Bruce, would... kill me.”

“Okay. Have you called Bruce yet?”

“No, I called you. I thought maybe you could do something?”

“Of course. I'll call S.H.I.E.L.D. and Tony. Can you call Bruce, tell him to stay in the tower?”

“Yeah, I-- I'll call him.”

“Okay,” Steve says again. “Jane, are you okay? Do you... believe Ross?”

She fiddles with the buttons of her shirt and frowns. “I... No, I-- I'm just freaked out that I've been... under surveillance or something. I'm not... scared of Bruce.” Is she? Is she scared of a man who held her hair back while she vomited, shared the bed with her and her stuffed bear? “I'm not. I'll call him right now.”

“And I'll call S.H.I.E.L.D. and get back to you soon.”

“Thanks, Steve.”

“Of course,” he says. “Least I can do.”

They say goodbye and she looks down at her phonebook, at Bruce's name. She really doesn't want to be the person to tell him this, after months of living in freedom. She takes a breath and hits 'call'.

“Hey,” he says when he answers, “I was going to call you later.” He sounds _happy_.

“Bruce, where are you? Are you at home?”

“Yeah, but I'm about to go out. There's this book I've been meaning to read for ages, _A Game of Thrones_? Thought I'd finally go out and get it.”

“Don't,” she says.

“Read the book?” he says.

“Go out. General Ross was just... here, at mine. He told me that... he's been surveilling you.”

“He did _what_?” he says, and she can hear a growl in his voice. “When?”

“Just a few minutes ago. I called Steve, he's going to... do something. I'm sorry, Bruce.” She hears a crash on the line and grimaces. “Bruce?”

“Yeah,” he mutters. “That guy isn't gonna stop till I'm dead.”

“I'm... I'm going to come over, okay? Just, uh, stay in the tower. It's safe there.”

“Safe,” Bruce echoes sneeringly.

“I'm sorry,” she repeats.

Bruce sighs, long and hard. “It's not your fault,” he murmurs, sounding completely defeated.

“I'll be over soon,” she promises.

-

He stays in his room as long as he can, staring at his cell phone, his traitorous phone. He was feeling okay today, he was going to go out and buy a book, and read it on the subway, and maybe have dinner with Jane later, and now he's trapped in this plush, fancy prison.

There's a knock at the door and he sighs. “Come in,” he calls.

Tony hangs his head around the door. “Hey, so... I just had, like, a dozen phone calls from S.H.I.E.L.D. and Steve and Pepper, and the long and short of it is... you've got to stay inside. Ross is gunning for you like a psycho right now.”

Bruce narrows his eyes. “Yep, I know.”

“Right, Jane told you. Funny he went over to hers... Although I guess me and him don't have the best relationship, and he's probably scared that Steve will cave his face in. Can you imagine if he tried to threaten Darcy? Man, I've seen Steve mad before, but that would be off the charts--”

“I'm sorry, Tony,” Bruce interrupts. “Could you just... leave me alone? Please?”

Tony's eyes widen a little. “Oh, yeah. Sure. I guess you're not in a great mood.”

“I guess not,” he says thinly.

“Yeah,” Tony says, a hint of nervousness in his tone. “Well, I'll leave you to... be angry.”

Bruce stares at the closed door and grips the cover of his bed between his fingers. His hands tremor. He hasn't had an incident in months, but he thinks that streak's about to be broken.

-

He ventures out of his room a few hours later, after a long and not very successful attempt at meditation, and finds something close to a summit meeting going on in one of Tony's living rooms. He hangs back at the door and listens to their conversation.

“What he said to you was a threat,” Steve says to Jane. “Maybe not enough for the cops, but he's trying to intimidate you. Might be worth trying to get a restraining order out against him.”

“I've already got my lawyers working on something for the tower,” Tony says, “that man won't be allowed within five hundred feet of this place, which might mess up his plans to buy overpriced sweaters from the Banana Republic around the corner.”

“What about all that shit that happened back in Boca Caliente last year,” Clint asks, “with the guy with the spiny skin? Wasn't he being charged with, like, putting bystanders in danger or something?”

“Got off,” Tony says, “fucking travesty. Army types – sorry, Steve – are a tight knit bunch of assholes.”

“Maybe these days,” Steve says. “Wouldn't've flown when I was a soldier.”

Something presses against Bruce's shoulder, and he practically jumps out of his skin, spinning around and holding up his hands. Darcy spreads her palms placatingly.

“Sorry. You okay?”

“Um...” he murmurs. “No.”

Darcy nods, and claps him on the arm. “Come on,” she says, and hustles him into the room.

If anyone heard him outside the door, which he assumes they did at least towards the end, they don't mention it. Darcy leads him over to the couch near Jane and joins Steve leaning against a chair.

“What's the word from S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Steve says.

Darcy sighs. “The word of the day is: cagey. I think they're pretty pissed though – Sitwell was in his office having a tense phone call with someone for close to an hour.”

“Why now, though?” Jane asks, leaning forward. She glances at Bruce and smiles, and he tries to smile back, but he knows it looks wrong. “I mean, you've been in New York since, what, January? And Ross knew that, so why did he wait?”

“That's a good question,” Tony says, “I wonder if--”

“I know why,” Bruce says. Everyone looks at him expectantly, and he fidgets his hands in his lap. “It's because today is the seven year anniversary of the... accident. The anniversary of me putting Betty in the hospital. If I had to _guess_ , I'd say he got drunk last night and got himself all full of piss and vinegar and decided that it was time to teach me a lesson.” Bruce had felt good about the anniversary this morning, too, for the first time ever. Felt like maybe he was starting to put things behind him. He should have known it was too good to be true.

Tony sighs. “Okay, well. What we need is a plan.”

Bruce shrugs and starts to sit forward. “Maybe I should just--”

Tony leans over the back of the couch and lays his hands on Bruce's shoulders, pulling him back against the cushions. “Maybe you should just _sit down_ and let us deal with it.”

Bruce sighs. “Fine, okay.”

Tony squeezes his shoulders and lets go. “Okay.”

“I think you should stay here for a while, Jane,” Darcy says, “if Bruce is right, and from what I know of Ross, he probably is, then he might come back to your apartment, and who knows what he'll do. I mean, if that's okay with Tony...”

Tony waves a hand. “Jeez, of course. We've got the room.”

“What about my stuff? My laptop's there, and my clothes...”

Darcy shrugs. “Gimme your keys, me and Steve will go over and pick up what you want.”

“Okay,” Jane says, “I'll make a list.”

“A list, really?” Darcy rolls her eyes. “We have to get this back on the subway, you know.”

Everyone starts making plans around him; Darcy and Jane bicker, Steve, Tony, and Clint go over how to deal with S.H.I.E.L.D., and Bruce sits on the couch like a loose thread. After a while, he gets up and leaves, and no one notices.

-

When Bruce fled Virginia, seven years ago, he took only what he could fit in a rucksack – clothes, money, a cell phone that he quickly dumped, and a shoebox full of photos and papers. The photos are basically his only connection to his past, for better or worse. He dumps them out on the bed and stares at them.

There's a knock at the door of his bedroom, and he puts the box aside and drags himself off the bed.

“Hey,” Jane says, when he opens the door.

“Hi,” he murmurs, stepping back to let her pass.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

He kicks the door closed and sighs.

“Sorry, stupid question,” she mutters.

He smiles tiredly. “Did Darcy and Steve get your stuff here okay?”

“Yeah, even my bear. Darcy didn't tease me as much as I thought she would.”

Bruce chuckles, wandering back over to the bed. “That's good.”

Jane follows and tips her head at the spread of pictures. “Is that you?” she asks, reaching out to pick up one of the pictures, stopping just short of it and glancing up at him. Bruce nods, and she picks it up. “Oh my God, you're so cute! How old were you?”

“Fifteen. That was taken at the New Mexico State Science Fair. I won first place.”

“You're so cute,” she repeats, and looks down at the rest of the pictures. “Can I...?”

“Sure,” he says, and sits back down on the bed. Jane sits beside him and starts sifting through photos.

“I love photos,” she says. “My mom's house is practically wallpapered with them.” She picks up a picture of his mother, pretty and fresh-faced, a year before she met Brian. “This is your mom, right? You look like her.”

“Everyone says I look like my father,” he murmurs. People used to use the resemblance as a weapon against him.

“Well, I don't know about that, but you've got her eyes and her mouth.”

He feels his eyes warm a little and sniffs. “Thanks.”

Jane's brow furrows a little as she looks at him. She leans over and gives him a kiss, then settles back down to continue going through the pictures. She picks up another picture of his mother, taken five years after the first one. She's holding a two year old Bruce in her arms, her smile dulled. One edge of the photo is rough from being torn, and Jane runs her finger over it.

“What happened to the rest of the picture?”

“My father was in it,” he says.

He can feel her looking at him, but he doesn't look up, just picks up another picture and smooths his thumb across the creases. “This is from my high school graduation. I looked like a dork.”

“No, you don't,” she says softly, taking the picture from between his fingers and looking closely at it. “Had acne, huh?”

“Yeah. It cleared up by the time I got to college.”

“I had to take pills to get rid of mine,” she says. She reaches out and slides a picture out from the bunch. “Oh, is this...”

He takes a look. It's of him and Betty, him hugging her from behind. He remembers the day: they were moving into their first apartment together, and she'd set the camera on a timer, and this was the only picture that had come out okay, without Bruce blinking or Betty looking at the floor. He remembers having to stand on his toes to be the same height as her, and he remembers them having sex on a mattress on the bedroom floor a few hours later. He remembers the General coming around later and Betty having a shouting match with him while Bruce stayed in bed, trying not to think of his own father.

“Yeah, that's me and Betty,” he says and takes a breath. “I'm gonna go use the bathroom,” he adds, pushing himself up.

“Oh, okay,” Jane says as he walks away.

He runs the water when he gets into the bathroom, and stares at himself in the mirror. He looked so young in those photos, and now he just looks so old and worn out. His hair is greying and his sight is going and back when that photo of him and Betty was taken, he had thought that now, at forty one, he'd have his life together. Have a job, and a nice house, marry Betty. Maybe have kids. 

He guesses it would be disingenuous to wonder 'where it all went wrong', because he damn well knows. His ego wouldn't let him just let Bio Force Enhancement Project die, and he got his comeuppance. And now he's getting it again, and for the rest of his life.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and shuts the water off, leaving the bathroom.

“Hey, who's Robert?” Jane asks as he walks back into the room.

“Huh?” he says, barely listening.

“Robert Banner,” she says, holding up a piece of paper. “You've got a degree from Harvard awarded to 'Robert Banner' in 1994. Summa cum laude.” She looks up at him, and he guesses he has a funny look on his face, because her cheeks pink a bit and she clears her throat. “Um, I wasn't snooping. Well, I mean... I was, but only for pictures. I thought maybe you had some baby pictures. Sorry.”

He smiles a little. “It's fine. I don't have any pictures of myself as a baby. And, uh, that's my undergrad degree. I don't know why I bothered keeping it.”

“Oh,” she says, “so your name's...?”

“My first name's Robert, Bruce is my middle name. I haven't gone by 'Robert' since I was eight years old, though, it's just on official stuff.”

Jane nods. “Oh, okay. I didn't know that.”

“Not many people do,” he says.

She nods and puts the certificate back in the box. “Are you going to come down and have something to eat?”

“I'm not hungry.”

She nods. “Okay...”

“You should go, though,” he says. It comes out sharper than he means it to, and her eyebrows climb. “I mean, I'm not great company right now.”

“That's okay, we don't have to--”

“Really, Jane, I think I'm just going to go to bed.”

“Oh...” She fidgets a little and frowns up at him. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, um... I just don't feel like being around anyone. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to...”

“No, I know,” she says, and gets up. “I am pretty hungry, so, uh...”

“Okay. Thanks.” They hug, and he sighs into her hair. “Thank you,” he repeats.

“We'll figure everything out,” she promises.

“Sure,” he murmurs.

-

Jane can't sleep. She tries for hours, but she can't stop thinking long enough. It seems silly, but she's kind of stuck on the name thing. It's such an innocuous thing, why wouldn't he have told her? Then again, why would he? Maybe it didn't even occur to him, if he's gone by 'Bruce' since he was eight – that's a long time to get used to the change. More importantly, why _should_ he? They're only... friends with benefits, he doesn't owe her anything.

But she wonders what else he hasn't told her. His past is kind of a mystery, he doesn't talk about it and she doesn't ask. She wants to ask, though. She wants to know.

“Damnit,” she mutters, getting out of bed and grabbing her laptop off the floor.

She switches the light back on, turns the computer on and logs into the tower's wireless. She opens up Google and types, 'Robert Bruce Banner'. Nothing about Bruce comes up, just stuff about people with the same or similar names – at least she assumes that he doesn't have Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. This should be a sign to stop, but Jane has always had a problem with giving up, so she adds 'Culver' to the search. That mostly brings up information about papers he wrote and lectures he gave, but at the end of the second page of results, there's an article from an Ohio newspaper. The link says: _Son of convicted murderer wanted for questioning in attack on girlfriend_ , and the quoted text reads: _Dr. **Robert Bruce Banner** , son of Dr. Brian **Banner** is wanted by police tonight in conjunction with an attack on his girlfriend Dr. Elizabeth Ross..._

Jane cringes and almost closes the tab, but she's never been one to resist curiosity, so she screws her face and clicks. The article continues: _The alleged attack took place on Tuesday afternoon at Culver University, Willowdale, Virginia, where Banner, 34, and Ross, 29, are both currently employed. Residents of Dayton may recall the trial and conviction of Banner's father, Brian, in 1982 for the murder of Banner's mother, Rebecca. Robert Banner was eight years old at the time of his mother's death._

“Oh, Bruce,” she mutters.

-

In the morning, Tony makes some kind of fancy omelette, delivering it with a flourish across the kitchen island. Pepper's already left for work, and Bruce hasn't come out of his room, so it's just her and Tony in the kitchen having breakfast.

“I don't get to cook for people enough,” Tony says, as he heaps ketchup on the side of his plate. She raises an eyebrow and he offers the bottle. “Can't have an omelette without ketchup, Doctor.”

She shrugs and takes the bottle. Turns out Tony's right, it is better with ketchup.

“You okay, Foster?” he asks, hopping up onto the stool next to her.

“Yeah? Why?”

He shrugs. “I dunno, Thunderbolt can be pretty intimidating.”

“Thunderbolt?”

Tony smirks. “That's his nickname, only his friends call him that, so of course...”

“You decided to as well.”

“Yep,” he says, and grins. “We've had some dealings in the past, him being Army and me being a weapons developer. He's a lot of bluster and bullshit. And moustache.”

She laughs. “It's a lot of moustache. I'm just kind of creeped out that he's been watching us. I mean--” Tony still doesn't about her and Bruce, Steve left the 'I know he stayed with you for a week' thing out when he called Tony, so she has to choose her words carefully. “All of us. It makes my skin crawl.”

“It's pretty skin-crawly, but you know he's just trying to scare you, right?”

“I know...” she says, as she hears footsteps coming into the room. She looks around to find Bruce in the doorway, his shoulders rounded forward a little. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” he murmurs, shuffling into the room.

“Oh, I didn't think you were going to get up...” Tony says, fork halfway to his mouth. “Otherwise I would have made more.”

Bruce shrugs. “It's okay, I'll make myself toast.” 

Breakfast passes uncomfortably, and Tony excuses himself as soon as he's finished eating. She wonders if he suspects something, but then maybe he just has a low tolerance for awkward silences.

“Are you okay?” Jane asks.

Bruce runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. “No.”

“Sorry, dumb question,” she mutters.

“It's fine...” he says. He eats his last slice of toast and puts the plate in the dishwasher. “What did he say to you?” he asks, his back still turned.

“What did who say to me?”

“Ross.”

“Oh, um... Just that, you know, he'd been watching us.”

Bruce turns around and leans against the counter. “Yesterday Steve said he'd threatened you.”

“Oh.” She hadn't been planning on telling Bruce about the part. “He was just telling me that I'd, you know, get in trouble, if I didn't... help him.”

“He said something else,” Bruce pushes. She's not surprised, that did _not_ sound convincing. “Tell me.”

“It's really not--”

“Jane,” he says softly, stopping her in her tracks. “Please just tell me what he said.”

She clears her throat. “Okay. He said that you'd... hurt me. But I know that's not true, I know he's just trying to scare me into... into...” She trails off as Bruce pushes off from the counter. “Bruce?”

“It's fine,” he says. “I'm just gonna... go have a shower.”

“Okay,” she calls after him. Fuck, she wishes she was a better liar.

-

He doesn't come back out of his room, and no one comes to check on him. He goes through his things, sorting out his new clothes, all the nice things Tony bought for him, shirts, sweaters, t-shirts, jeans, and pants. He's probably never had this much clothing, not even when he was with Betty. He has a lot of books now, too, and a nice laptop and DVDs. He's not going to be able to take those.

He guesses he is going then, as his hands pack things into his rucksack almost on autopilot. It'll be best for everyone, him and Tony and Jane and Pepper, who's been so kind to let some stranger live in her home.

He'll only hurt them, or himself, or both. And then they'll have to deal with that, and he doesn't think that, say, Steve – who's kind and noble and still innocent in a lot of ways – should have to be the one to put Bruce out of his misery. Best he just save everyone the stress and heartache.

He waits till night, almost one in the morning, before he leaves his room. He has a stash of food under his bed, so he's eaten, but not a lot and he's still hungry. He used to be able to subsist on much less than what he's eaten today. He's been spoiled living here.

He gets into the elevator and hits the button for the ground floor. It's a shame he can't say goodbye to Jane, but he's never said goodbye to anyone before, so why start now?

When the elevator passes the seventieth floor, it starts to slow.

“Shit,” he mutters, reaching out to press 'ground' again, but he knows it's not going to help, and when the elevator hits the sixty ninth floor, the doors slide open.

Tony steps in, and leans over to hit 'ground' again. “You're going to ground, right?” he asks, face blank.

“Yeah. How did you--”

“Jarvis,” Tony says. “I told him to tell me if you were leaving the building. Running away is pretty easy, huh?”

Bruce shrugs. “I've been running my whole life.”

“Uh huh,” Tony says, facing forward.

“I ran away from home when I was sixteen,” Bruce says, unsure of why he's trying to justify himself, if that's even what he's doing right now.

Tony shrugs a shoulder. “I was sent away to boarding school at eight.”

“That's not really the same thing.”

“Whatever,” Tony says dismissively, and Bruce feels a bolt of irritation go through him. “So, what, it's just, 'see you later, suckers'?”

“No, it's not--”

Tony turns to him. “No, clearly I am a sucker. I let you live under my roof, eat my food, use my internet, I buy you stuff, but when things aren't so cushy, you're off.”

“It's _not_ like that,” Bruce snaps. “It wasn't my intention to abuse your hospitality, it's just time for me to... It's better this way, safer for everyone.”

Tony sneers. “That's _bullshit_ and you know it. You know Steve's going to bat for you with the fucking _Army_. The man practically bleeds patriotism and he's doing it for _you_ ,” Tony says, punctuating it with a jab of his finger.

“And I appreciate it, but he won't have to any more.”

Tony nods, pursing his mouth. “Because Captain America is totally known for giving up without a fight.”

“It's just...” Bruce shakes his head. “I'm dangerous and I'm bringing it to your door, and it's... the right thing to do...”

Tony rolls his eyes dramatically. “Oh my God, get your head out of your ass, Bruce.”

Bruce blinks. “What?”

“Your head, it's pretty far up your anus, you might need surgery for it.”

“I'm just--”

“I don't want to hear your bullshit excuses!” Tony says loudly. Bruce narrows his eyes and Tony crosses his arms over his chest. “Don't make that face at me, I'm not scared of you.”

Bruce widens his eyes. “I'm not trying to scare you.” He glances at the elevator display – they're at the twenty second floor. “Look, I just... Everyone's been steering clear of me since... You guys are nervous and--”

“Is that it?” Tony says. “You're sad 'cause we haven't been paying enough attention to you?”

“No, that's not what I'm--”

“It's called giving you _space_ ,” Tony interrupts _again_. “I can be on your ass twenty four seven if you'd prefer that. I can get right up there.”

“Will you stop talking about my ass, please?”

Tony shrugs. “It's a nice ass.”

Bruce rubs at his face, dislodging his glasses, and barks something between a laugh and a scream. 

“Look,” Tony says, “you've been running a long time, right? You've got to stop eventually. Gotta make a stand.”

The doors slide open on the ground floor and Bruce looks up and out into the lobby. “I can't stand being trapped in this building,” he murmurs.

“It's not going to last forever,” Tony says. “This isn't a prison. It's a home.”

Bruce screws up his face and sighs. What the hell is he going to do? Tony taps his foot and tips his head to one side.

“I won't stop you,” he says softly.

 _Fuck_.

Bruce leans over and presses 'ninety' on the board. The doors close again and he looks over at Tony.

Tony holds up his hands. “I'm not saying a word.”

-

If he isn't leaving, then he's at least going to be proactive. Tony said that he should stop running, and he's right, but the problem is that he'll _never_ stop running, so long as the Other Guy is with him. Ross, or S.H.I.E.L.D., or someone completely new will always be after him, and he'll have to go even if he doesn't want to. He won't always have a fortified tower to live in.

The next morning he gets up at seven, eats a huge breakfast, and goes down to his lab. He passes Jane on the way there, and they awkwardly chat for a couple of minutes before going their separate ways. Jane is going with Steve to collect some stuff from S.H.I.E.L.D., and Bruce is terribly jealous. She kisses him on the cheek and says that she'll check in with him later.

His lab is one of a suite of 'Hulk-proof' rooms, though he's only trusting Tony word on that since it's never really been tested. Hopefully it'll live up to its name, for what Bruce is planning.

He's been working on reversing the effects of the radiation on and off since he moved in here. He'd tried, before, to put the idea of ever being cured out of his mind, but the lure of a fully equipped, state-of-the-art lab is too great to pass up.

The thing is, Sterns was _so close_ to curing Bruce. Bruce has tried to get into contact with him since, but the guy has disappeared off the face of the Earth, and Bruce doesn't even want to contemplate what that means. He's managed to find a lot of Sterns's research on S.H.I.E.L.D. databases that Tony has 'access' to, though, and he thinks that with a little adjusting, maybe he can get it to work. And if he does, then maybe he'll be free.

He works for days on it, stays in the lab except to eat and sleep. He's not sure what everyone else is doing – he knows that Steve's been round a lot, and Jane has been in and out, and he doesn't mean to ignore people, he just knows that they'll try to talk him out of trying this again. He would, if it was someone else, but while everyone else is operating under the assumption that he can live peacefully the way he is, he knows better. If he isn't going to leave, he has to do something.

By the end of the week, he's been stuck inside the tower for eight days, and he has a prototype serum ready. Out in real world science, this would have to go through rigorous testing before getting close to even a _mouse_ , but Bruce is the only lab rat he has, and he doesn't have the time or the resources to have it peer reviewed. He sits at his desk with his head resting in his arms and stares at the vial, gearing himself up. Finally he sits up and grabs the vial and a syringe. He loads up the syringe, taps the side with his nail, and looks up at the ceiling.

“Jarvis, please lock the door and cut your monitoring of this room.” Tony assured him that he had full control over whether Jarvis was watching, and he doesn't want someone untrained intervening in this, or getting in harm's way if it backfires.

“Sir...” Jarvis says, with maybe a hint of anxiety in his voice. Bruce knows it's just a program, but it still gives him pause for a moment.

He takes a breath. “Do it.”

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis says, and the light on the camera in the corner goes out.

“Okay,” he mutters and holds the syringe between his fingers. His chest feels kind of tight, and he swallows heavily. He presses the needle to his upper arm and blinks a couple of times. “Please work,” he whispers, pushes the needle in, through muscle, and depresses the stopper.

It feels cold at first, and stings like hell. He pulls the needle out and lays it on the desk. His arm feels a little funny, numb, with shooting pains emanating from the injection site. His hand is starting to twitch too, and when he lifts it to have a look, his vision blurs and goes spotty.

“Fuck,” he mutters, though he can't open his mouth all the way. Oh, he thinks distantly, his jaw has locked up. And hey, so have his arms and his back! His head rolls back, and he feels himself begin to fit before his brain finally gives up and pulls him under.

-

When he opens his eyes again, someone is shouting at him... and shaking him? Is he still fitting?

“Nuh,” he murmurs irritably. His head is _pounding_.

“Bruce! What did you take?” Jane asks, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

He groans and opens his eyes to slits. Jane's face swims into view, and she looks scared. “Bruce!” she repeats, shaking his shoulders. “What did you _do_?”

“Huh-- hulk,” he mumbles. It's hard to keep his eyes open and speak, so 'Hulk' is about as much as he's going to be able to get out.

“I'm going to get help,” she says, pulling away from him.

“No,” he grunts, weakly grabbing for her hand. “Ch-check blood.”

“What?” She leans back over him and brushes hair from his face. “How do I do that?”

“Syringe... vein...” he murmurs, his eyelids drooping. “Desk.”

He feels her get up, and hears her clattering around looking for a needle. An indeterminate amount of time later, she's back on the floor (when did he get on the floor?), holding the needle in a shaking hand.

“Find the vein,” he murmurs, rolling his head to the side to watch.

“How? I-- I can't,” she says, pressing her fingers to the crease of his arm.

“Slap my arm,” he says.

She smacks her hand against his arm a couple of times and feels around for a vein, but she just looks more distressed. “I don't know how to do this, Bruce,” she says.

“Just...” He takes a shallow breath. “Just cut me. There's a blade on the... desk. Put the blood on a slide.”

He feels her cut his arm, but he barely has the energy to find it painful. She pushes the slide against his skin and collects the blood then gets up and takes it to the desk. “What do I do now?” she asks.

He groans. He's never going to be able to explain that to her. “J... Jarvis,” he tries to call as loudly as he can. “Turn on.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Compare blood to the... the s...” He's really flagging now, and he can barely form words. “ _Serum_. Make sure I'm okay. Tell Jane.”

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis says, and he can hear Jarvis give Jane directions, but he's too tired to expend energy on trying to understand what's being said.

“Bruce,” Jane says a little while later, “Jarvis says your body is metabolising the drug seventy five percent faster than normal.”

“Okay,” he sighs. “'m okay. 'm gonna sleep now.”

-

When he wakes for a second time, he's lying on something soft. His head still hurts, though less, and his mouth is dry – it feels like the hangover he had after his first college keg party, but at least he'd had some fun then to make up for the pay off. 

“Ugh,” he groans.

“Bruce?” Jane asks. “Are you okay?”

“I dunno, am I alive?”

There's a resounding silence from her, and he opens one eye, and turns his head. She's sitting on a chair near him, stony faced. “Bad joke, sorry.” He tries to push himself up onto his elbows and his back spasms.

“Just take it slow,” Jane says. “Do you want anything?”

“Water?”

She nods and goes to the bathroom to fill a cup full of water. She brings it back out and holds it up to his mouth to sip. He takes it too fast and ends up coughing up most of the water all over his chin.

“Wow,” he mutters, wiping at his face.

Jane puts the cup on the floor. “Do you want to sit up?”

He nods and she leans over him, slips her arms under his and hauls him upright. He feels like a kid, especially when she picks up the water again and lifts it to his mouth.

“I can do that,” he says, taking it off her. “Thanks.” He finishes off the rest of the water in a couple of seconds and palms the cup. He's on the couch, he realises, which is on the other side of the room from his desk. He frowns. “How did I get over here?” God, did Jane call Tony?

“I dragged you,” Jane says tightly. She snatches the cup out of his hands as he continues rolling it between his palms. “What the hell were you doing?”

“Ah. Trying to... get rid of the Other Guy. I thought if I did then maybe I could get Ross off my back.”

“Haven't you tried that before?” she asks.

He nods. “Yeah. Almost worked once, but it didn't quite stick. I thought I could do it this time.”

“And let me guess, you were the first test subject?”

“I didn't have any mice...” he murmurs. She does not find that funny. Why does he keep trying to be funny?

“I thought you were trying to _kill_ yourself,” she snaps.

“I'm sorry.”

“You were _foaming at the mouth_ ,” she says.

He cringes. “I just want to be rid of him so bad, but he won't let me go.”

She purses her lips. “Well, _he_ probably just saved your life.”

He snorts. “'Saved', sure. Not the first time he's done that.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair. “I... Okay. I _wasn't_ trying to kill myself, but I have, in the past. The Other Guy would never let me.”

“How? How many times? Jane's tone is clipped, and her expression is tight and upset, but she's ever the pragmatist.

“Three times,” he says. “Pills, wrists, and, uh, gun. None of it even left a mark.”

“Okay.”

“Life just seemed really... desolate, for a while. I couldn't see a way clear. I was living in near isolation, in countries where I could barely communicate, and I was being hunted. I thought it would be easier all round to just... cease.”

“Okay,” she repeats.

“I'm not... suicidal, though. I don't think I was even back then. I was just... desperate. I'm not going to do it again, I promise.”

“Okay.”

He sighs. “I'm sorry that you found me like that. Thank you for... looking after me. Not telling anyone.”

“I didn't really have a choice,” she says, not meeting his eyes.

He reaches out and gently slides his fingers against hers. “I'm sorry,” he repeats.

She looks up at him and sighs. “I was really scared, Bruce. I thought you were going to die, and I had no idea what I was doing, and I can't believe that you took such a stupid risk with your _life_ , and for no good reason, because everyone's working to help you and we're going to figure it out, and you need to pull your head out of your ass and stop shutting people out!”

He chuckles a little and she narrows her eyes at him. “Sorry,” he says, “it's just... Tony told me to get my head out of my ass a few days ago.”

“Great minds,” she says. “Look, if you want to get rid the Hulk, then I'll help you, Tony, Erik, I'm sure we can find other scientists, but don't you ever pull some stupid asshole move like that again.”

He nods. “Okay, I promise.” She stares at him and he smiles. “Really, I do.”

She wrinkles up her nose. “Fine. Do you want to go to your room and lie down?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you walk?”

“Uh... I guess we'll find out.”

He can just about walk, although he needs her to steady him. As they walk out of the door, he frowns. “How'd you get in here? I locked the door.”

She shrugs. “Jarvis let me in.”

“Oh, did he?” he says, glancing upwards.

“Sir,” Jarvis says, “Mr Stark is in the lounge on the eighty ninth floor. You may, perhaps, want to steer clear.”

“Uh huh. Thanks, Jarvis.”

“Glad to have been of assistance,” Jarvis chirps.

-

He comes out for dinner later, and is immediately told by Tony that he looks like shit. He mumbles something about having a migraine, which isn't exactly a lie at this point, eats his food, and goes back to bed.

He's only been asleep for a couple of hours when there's a knock at the door. He groans and puts his pillow over his head. The knocking continues and then Jane calls, “It's only me. Jane.”

He pulls the pillow from his head. “Jarvis, open the door.”

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis says quietly. Bruce appreciates the thought.

“Oh!” Jane says as she steps through the door. “Did I wake you up? I'm sorry, I'll go...”

“No, it's okay,” he murmurs. “Come in.”

She's already in her pyjamas, a t-shirt that he vaguely thinks might be his, and pink bottoms. She shuts the door and looks at him worriedly. “How are you feeling?”

“Head hurts. Took a lot of pills...” He pauses and looks at her. “A safe amount of pills. Think I've just got to sleep it off.”

“Okay, I should go, I'm sorry for waking you...”

“Wait,” he mumbles, and pushes himself up onto one elbow. “You could... stay.”

She twists the bottom of her (--his, it definitely used to be his) t-shirt in her hands. “Yeah?”

He slides back down to the pillow – that's enough uprightness for tonight. “Yeah.”

She smiles and comes over to the bed. He's lying on one side of the bed, near the edge, so the only room for her is behind him. He mumbles something about moving, but she shushes him and after a moment's hesitation slips her arms around his chest.

“I've always wanted to be the big spoon,” she says.

He smiles into the pillow and she holds him a little tighter. “I'm sorry about this afternoon,” he mumbles.

“I know,” she says, “it's okay. It's a stressful time.”

“It was still a stupid thing to do...”

“No argument from me,” she says.

He snorts and then groans as his head pounds a little more. Jane hums sympathetically, and he settles back down.

“Bruce?” she asks quietly, a little while later.

“Yeah?” 

“I, uh. Maybe I should leave this till morning...”

“Go on,” he mumbles. He probably won't even remember this in the morning.

“Well, I... I googled you.”

“You...? Oh...”

“Yeah, and I just want you to know that I know about... your parents, and... you can talk to me – or not talk to me – if you want. Mostly I just wanted you to know that I know.”

He sighs and presses one of his hands against hers. “Thanks.”

She kisses his shoulder and he relaxes further into the pillow, sighing. If it weren't for the headache, he'd feel downright contented.

-

By the next morning, he feels fine. He's not sure what went wrong with the serum, but he isn't as disappointed as he thought he'd be. He rolls over onto his back, stretching his arm out over Jane's head. She cuddles against his side and he loops his arm around her shoulders. They lie like that for a few minutes, until she starts to stir.

“Hey,” he murmurs, brushing strands of hair away from her face.

She presses her palm against his chest and yawns. “Hey. Feel better?”

“Yeah, I'm good. Thanks for... last night. For what you said. It's hard for me to... bring up.” He scrubs a hand through his hair and smiles awkwardly.

“That's... okay,” she says, returning the awkward smile. She leans up and kisses him, sliding her hand around his side and running the other one into his hair.

He rolls over onto his side and deepens the kiss, hooking one of his legs around hers. They haven't gone at it in a while, and it's not long before they're panting and groaning and rocking their hips together. Jane opens her mouth wider against his as he rolls his hips, and he takes the opportunity to bite down on her bottom lip. She grunts and shoves him down onto to his back, straddling his hips and reaching over to his night stand to grab condoms.

They didn't really say much to each other, aside from 'ow' and 'your elbow is digging into my chest' and 'could you move your...?'; mostly it's just grunts and pants, and eventually high-pitched whines and moans. He hadn't realised how bad he needed this, but as his orgasm rolls through him and Jane tugs hard at his hair, he's not totally sure what he's been waiting for. Life could be an awful lot worse than this.

“Oh,” he breathes, as he comes back down. He runs a hand down his leg and sighs.

“Yeah,” she says, pressing a quick kiss to his mouth. “Want to jump in the shower?”

He groans at the thought of getting up, and Jane laughs at him. 

“Come on, lazy, get up. Tony's going to start wondering where you are soon.”

“He'll wonder why you're wandering around in your pyjamas, too.”

She wrinkles up her nose for a moment, looking thoughtful. “I'll say I was looking for the laundry room.” She grabs his arm and starts dragging him up. “Come on.”

When he stumbles into the kitchen forty minutes later, ten minutes after Jane, Steve and Tony are there too.

“You look a bit happier,” Tony says, and gestures to the pot of coffee in his hand. 

Bruce nods and Tony pours him a cup and slides it across the kitchen island. Bruce picks up the cup and takes a sip – he can't drink a lot of coffee, not like he did before, but he can have it in moderation, and Tony makes the _best_. “Yep. Slept off the migraine.” 

“Good,” Steve says, “'cause we think we've figured out a solution, but you're not going to like it.”

“Uh huh,” Bruce says, glancing at Jane and taking a seat on one of the kitchen stools. “Why not?”

“Well...” Tony says, scratching at the back of his head. “You're a pretty private person, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Well, you've got to become as visible as possible. You've got to reveal your secret identity to the world.”

Bruce frowns. “Why?”

“It was Darcy's idea,” Steve says. “She said that Ross wouldn't go after me or Tony the way he's going after you because it would be so public, and she's right. You've gotta be public, you've got to have the media poking into your life and reporting on every little thing, that way Ross gets held accountable to not just the Army, but basically everyone who reads newspapers or looks at the internet. It's not... ideal, but the media's attention has got to be better than Ross's, right?”

“Uh...” He's seen how tightly wound Steve gets over the media's intrusion into his life – he's not totally sure that it _is_ better. “There has to be another choice.”

“I think we've gone through them all,” Steve says. “There's having S.H.I.E.L.D. 'disappear' Ross, which is a little too illegal for my tastes – not to mention that someone working under him might just take up the mantle. There's getting him dishonourably discharged which, believe me, I'd love to see, but as a General, it'd be hard to swing, and even if we managed it, he's going to have resources, it probably wouldn't stop him. And then there's just old-fashioned threatening and brute force, which is also illegal, and also is only going to piss him off.”

“Yeah...” Bruce sighs, taking another a sip of coffee. “I see the logic behind it, I just dunno that I want to put myself out there as the freakshow I am.”

“Bruce...” Jane admonishes.

Bruce shrugs. “Anyway, aren't the details of my... transformation classified by the Army? Won't I get in trouble?”

“We'll get them declassified,” Steve says, “if you want to do this.”

“You want out of this tower, right?” Tony says.

“Yeah, of course I do, but--”

“Great! To that end, I've arranged a press conference for this evening.” He jumps up from his stool and starts heading to the door. 

“ _What?_ ” Bruce calls after him.

“Better sooner than later!” Tony calls back.

“Tony!” he shouts.

“I'll get you a nice suit, don't worry!” Tony's reply drifts back.

Bruce swivels in his seat and glares at Steve. “I assume you already knew about that.”

Steve spreads his hands. “Just trust us?”

“What do you think?” he asks Jane.

She shrugs. “I think you probably won't get rid of Ross, short of him dying.” God, and he's contemplated that man's death, contemplated being the one to kill him, but when it comes to it, Bruce may be a lot of things, but he's not a murderer. “But at least this way he'll be under a hell of a lot of scrutiny.”

“Exactly,” Steve says.

“You can't hide forever,” Jane adds.

Bruce taps his fingernails on the granite. He _does_ want to get out of this tower, he's starting to feel like Rapunzel, and maybe this is the only way. Embrace the future, or whatever.

“Fine,” he mutters and Steve smiles at him. Jane comes over to sit beside him, and offers him some of her pancakes.

-

Tony schedules the press conference for seven pm, in one of the tower's conference rooms. He tries to give Bruce new clothes, but Bruce decides to stick with his jeans and t-shirt. No need to pretend he's something he's not – that's the whole point of this circus.

There's an adjoining room to the conference room, and that's where Tony leaves everyone as he swaggers out to talk to the reporters, telling Bruce he'll get him when it's time. Bruce has cue cards in his hands, with prompts written on them, like 'YOUR NAME' and 'bio force' and 'Brazil', but it doesn't stop him from feeling sick.

“I think I'm gonna throw up,” he mutters.

“You'll be fine,” Pepper says absently, watching the live feed of the conference on a wall mounted screen.

Jane pats him on the shoulder. “Hey, you used to teach, right? It's all public speaking.”

“I was a terrible lecturer,” he says. “I talked too fast and stumbled over my words.”

“Imagine everyone's naked?” Steve suggests, and Darcy laughs. “I dunno, I heard it on a TV show.”

“Bruce, you're going to be on in a minute,” Pepper says, nodding to the screen.

Tony is telling the reporters to settle down, and they do after Tony shouts good-naturedly at them to shut up. “Okay, guys! Guys! I'll turn this car around if you don't calm down!” There's a smattering of laughter, and the noise in the room lessens. “ _Thank you_. Okay, so, I know you're all here to listen to me talk about Stark Industries newest ground-breaking invention, because that's what I told my people to tell you guys. But... that's not why you're here.” There's a buzz of activity and Tony holds up his hands. “Guys! You're going to like this, I promise! Now, I know most of you are probably tech reporters, but after this maybe you'll be rubbing shoulders with the big boys.” 

“That's your cue,” Pepper says, grabbing Bruce by the arm and dragging him to the door.

“This is not a good idea,” he murmurs as she pushes him through it.

“I'd like to introduce you all to a friend of mine,” Tony says, “Bruce, come up here.”

Bruce, of course, trips up the steps to the platform, but manages to catch himself and crosses the stage to Tony.

“Is your mike on?” Tony asks.

“I... I don't know,” Bruce says, looking down at the black mike someone attached to the collar of his t-shirt earlier.

Tony tips his head to one side. “That's a no. Turn around.” He looks back at the crowd. “Just a minute, folks!” 

Bruce turns, and Tony switches the pack clipped to Bruce's waistband on, and turns him back to face the front. “Okay, knock 'em dead!”

Bruce steps up to the podium and swallows. The reporters mostly look bemused and a little irritated, except one blonde lady at the back who's just smiling.

“Okay,” he mutters, and takes a breath. “I'm Dr. Robert Bruce Banner. I'm a doctor of nuclear physics and some... other things, and I'm also... the Hulk.”

The roar of noise is shocking, and he steps back from the podium. Everyone's shouting questions, and he can feel his blood pressure climb already. Tony springs forward and drapes himself over Bruce's back.

“Guys!” he shouts. “Bruce has a nervous disposition, can you quiet down a little?”

A hush falls over the room, as if everyone realised at once what Bruce being the Hulk actually _means_.

“One question,” Tony says, and points to a guy at the front. “You. Go.” He pats Bruce on the back and steps away again.

“Just... how?” the reporter asks. He looks awfully young, and completely unprepared for this turn of events.

“I...” Bruce runs his fingers through his hair. “Okay. I was part of a research group working for the Army. The project was called the Bio-Force Enhancement Project, and we were trying to... recreate Project Rebirth. The project that made Steve-- Captain Rogers Captain America.”

There's another flurry of questions, and Tony yells, “Guys!” from the back and they quiet down again. 

Bruce taps his fingers on the podium. “The project wasn't... really viable, but... under threat of losing our funding and pressure from a man who I hoped might one day be my father-in-law...” He takes a breath. “I tested it out on myself, and it backfired.”

“How do we even know you're really him?” a guy yells from the back. “What proof do you have that you're the Hulk?”

Bruce opens his mouth to answer, but Tony gets there first.

“I thought some smartass would ask that,” he says, “so I brought video.”

He pulls a remote out of his pocket and points it at another wall-mounted screen. The footage is from when Bruce was trying out controlled transformations in British Columbia – he didn't realise S.H.I.E.L.D. followed him there. That's... kind of distressing.

He winces as his skin on screen swells and distends, and he hears muttering from the audience. He knows what 'Hulking out' looks like, but Christ, that's disgusting. Tony hits pause as the Other Guy roars.

There's a moment of hushed silence before the same smartass shouts, “Could be CGI!” 

Tony sighs. “Are you saying you'd like Bruce to Hulk out here and now?” There's a murmur. “Thought so. Look, just open your minds and believe, okay, because this is all the proof you're getting for now.” He tips his head toward the back room, and Bruce guesses that the press conference is over.

He turns back to the reporters, who all have their phones out and are probably furiously googling him. “One more thing,” he says, and everyone's attention snaps to him. He takes a breath. “I know that you're probably all googling me right now and you'll find out, so... yes, I was abused as a child, and yes, my father did kill my mother in 1980. I was a ward of the court for a year before one of my aunts took me in, and all of this probably does have something to do with the manifestation and appearance of the Hulk.”

There's another chorus of questions, and Tony steps forward, laying his hand on Bruce's arm and nodding to the crowd. “Okay, press conference over, have a nice evening. I hear McDonald's is having a special on McFlurries” He leads Bruce off stage and back into the adjoining room, where everyone looks kind of shocked.

“That was incredibly brave,” Pepper says.

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs. Bruce would have assumed that Steve already knew about his past, but from the looks of it, he didn't.

“You're awesome,” Darcy says, and gives him a quick hug.

“That was pretty badass,” Tony says, and pats him on the back.

“Um, thanks,” he mutters. He's not sure if it was brave – stupid, maybe, but 'brave' seems to be overstating matters.

Jane hasn't said anything yet and when he looks over at her, she just smiles.

“So, uh, do you think I'm safe now?”

Tony grips him by the shoulders. “I think you should probably stay inside a couple more days, but only because you'll get mobbed by reporters, so that's an upgrade, right?”

“Eh...” He tugs at his hair. “Is that any better?”


	7. Chapter 7

A couple of days after the press conference, Bruce's face is all over the covers of magazines. She's in a line up at the grocery store buying a box of tampons and a jar of peanut butter, a sad but accurate comment on her life, and Bruce's confused and slightly blank expression is looking back at her. The front of the magazine asks, _IS THIS 5'6'', 150 POUND MILD-MANNERED SCIENTIST FROM OHIO_ REALLY _THE HULK?_ She picks up the magazine and flicks to the article against her better judgement, finding a picture of Steve and Bruce that really draws attention to their height difference, with the caption: _The doctor and the captain: Banner, until now credited as an unknown male, has been photographed several times with Captain America over the last few months – lending credibility to his claim?_

“Getting that too?” the checkout guy asks.

She stuffs it back into the rack. “Nope, just these... two things,” she mutters. God, why doesn't this place have self-checkout?

-

By the end of the week he's being interviewed on MSNBC. She doesn't set out to watch it, but it gets on the evening news and she ends up watching a clip of it while she's clipping her toenails.

“--you experimented on yourself?” the interviewer is saying.

Bruce grimaces and scratches at the back of his head. “Yeah... I don't recommend it as a method of scientific discovery,” he says.

“The statement released by Stark Industries earlier in the week said that it was 'gamma radiation' that caused the... transformation. Can you explain exactly what gamma radiation is?”

“Um...” He fidgets in his seat and pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. “Sure. Gamma radiation is electromagnetic, which means it's sort of similar to radio waves. It's a naturally occurring form a radiation that comes from space, but the atmosphere absorbs it before it reaches us on the ground. In small doses it actually kills cancerous and pre-cancerous cells.”

The interviewer nods. “Other scientists have responded to your statement saying that gamma radiation couldn't do what you're claiming it did to you.”

Bruce sighs. “Yeah... I can see why they'd say that, but um...” He smooths a thumb along his eyebrow and leans forward in his chair. “We used gamma in a different way than really had ever been done before. What we were trying to do was recreate Project Rebirth – the super soldier. That project used a serum in conjunction with something called 'vita-rays', which are... difficult to explain, and I'm not great at explaining things, so. The problem with Project Rebirth is that it was an extremely unstable formula, and the project leader died minutes after the only success with Steve Rogers. What we... _thought_ we figured out was that gamma radiation would activate the serum in the body more reliably than the vita-rays had, but due to the fact that I administered the drug myself and set up the radiation... machine myself, I ended up getting... a lot more gamma radiation than we had intended.”

“And that should have killed you,” she says.

“Yep,” he says. “And I honestly don't know why it didn't. It's possibly genetic, but I'm not sure.”

There's a jump cut and suddenly Bruce is laughing a little nervously at something the interviewer had said.

“So, now that you're no longer in hiding, got any plans?”

“Eh... I don't know,” he murmurs, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“It's his birthday next week!” Tony yells from off camera. The camera swings round to him and he gives it the thumbs up, then swings back to Bruce.

The interviewer smiles. “Happy birthday. How old are you going to be?”

“Ugh, forty two,” Bruce says, running his fingers through his hair and smiling self-deprecatingly.

Jane didn't know that it was his birthday coming up, but then, maybe he's got plans that don't involve her. She can't help but wonder, ever since the press conference, if this isn't actually the perfect opportunity for him to get back together with Dr Ross. It seems like the only impediments to them being together has been his status as a fugitive, and her father. Now the first one's been dealt with, and the second one is getting dealt with, and she really wouldn't _blame_ him for getting back together with the love of his life... 

Except that maybe she kind of would?

Her phone rings and of course it's Bruce. Pretty much the only people who ever call her are Bruce, Darcy, and her mother. She picks up the phone and looks at his name for a moment before answering.

“Hey,” she says, doing her best to sound normal. “I'm watching you on TV right now.”

“Oh, that must be exciting for you,” he drawls.

“You did pretty well, it looks like.”

“I did okay. I don't like having to explain physics to non-scientists, it's just a losing game for everyone involved.”

“Yeah, non-scientists suck,” she says.

He chuckles, and she hears something crunch on the line. “Sorry, I'm eating chips,” he says.

“I wish you hadn't told me that, now I want chips,” she grumbles.

“Sorry,” he repeats, and she can hear the smile in his voice. “So, uh, Tony's throwing me a birthday party? Do you want to come?”

“Sure,” she says. “Although...” She should really let this go, but... “you didn't even mention it was coming up.”

“Uh, yeah... well, I haven't celebrated it in a long time. I didn't really think about it, but I guess Tony's read my file or something...”

“Fair enough. What kind of party is it going to be?”

“Hookers and blow?” Bruce says, and laughs a little. “No, he promised it'd be just friends, and he was good about Steve's birthday, so I'm very tentatively hopeful that it won't be... awful.”

“Okay. So what do you want for your birthday?”

“Oh God,” he says, “don't get me anything, I don't need anything.”

“It's not about _needing_ something,” Jane says.

“Still... don't worry about it.”

“Okay, but don't think this means that you're getting out of buying me a birthday present,” she says, and instantly regrets it. Maybe that's too presumptuous?

He snorts. “All right. When's your birthday?”

“Oh, uh, January 5th.”

“Okay, well, that's easy to remember. I'll start planning now.”

“You... do that,” she says, and an uncomfortable silence stretches out between them. “So...” she says eventually.

“Um,” he says at the same time.

“Oh, sorry, you go,” she says.

“No, you, uh, you can... Um.”

She smiles. “I should... go. I've got to... eat. And have a shower.”

“Yeah, I should... finish these chips,” he says.

“Okay. Well, good night...”

“Yeah, good night,” he murmurs.

“Oh, wait!” she says suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“When's the party?”

“Oh, it's next Wednesday. Like, seven?”

“Okay. See you then.”

“Yeah, see you.”

She hangs up and looks down at her phone. “What the fuck?” she murmurs to herself.

-

Despite what he said, she still wants to buy him a present. She _knows_ Tony will, and Darcy and Steve too, probably, and she doesn't want to be the asshole who comes empty-handed.

The problem is: _what_ does she get him. What does he like? Purple? That's not much to go on.

She makes a special trip out to a mall to trawl stores and still comes up empty. All she really manages to accomplish is feeling bad about herself, surrounded by beautiful women, both in the flesh and photographic. It's just a continuing theme, really; she shouldn't have, but last night she spent a bit of time googling Betty Ross, which was a really huge mistake because it just reinforced to Jane how beautiful Betty is. All the articles about her that Jane found referred to her as 'the beautiful Dr Ross'. Which... was pretty gross, but still. 

In fact, Dr Ross looks more than a little like Darcy, with her long hair, pouty lips, and big (or bigger than Jane's, which-- not hard) breasts. Jane felt pretty self-conscious around Darcy too, when she first interned, until she got to know her and she realised, with all the love in the world, that Darcy's kind of an idiot. She doesn't have that option with Betty. Which, honestly, is probably a good thing. Dr Ross is no idiot.

Her phone rings a couple of hours into her fruitless searching, while she's grimacing at a solid wall of _Fifty Shades of Grey_ in a book store. It's her mom.

“Crap,” she mutters, and answers the phone. “Hey, Mom.”

“Janey,” her mom says. Jane hates that nickname. “How are you?”

“I'm fine, Mom, how are you?”

“Oh, fine, I was just thinking...”

Jane winces. “Yeah?”

“Mm. Your friend who looked after you when you were sick, his name was Bruce, wasn't it?”

Fuck. “Yes...?”

“And he had quite a distinctive sounding voice...” She sighs. “No point beating around the bush. Are you dating the Hulk?”

Jane screws up her face. “I, uh... It's... it's complicated.”

“Okay. So, you're having sex with him?”

“Mom!” she squeaks, drawing a few curious looks. She hurries off to a less busy part of the store. 

“Oh, please, Jane, I'm fifty nine, I can say the word 'sex'.”

“Not to _me_ ,” Jane insists. She's pretty sure that her cheeks are bright red now. “Anyway, it's just... it's complicated.”

“Mm-hm. Tell me about him.”

That's an order if ever Jane's heard one. “Well, he's... he's a really nice guy.” 

“And a nine foot green monster.”

“Hulk isn't a monster,” Jane says quickly.

“Mm- _hm_. Go on.”

Jane runs her fingers through her hair and rolls her eyes. “He's... kind, and intelligent, and he's not very self-confident, and he has sort of a sly sense of humour...”

“Do you like him?”

Jane sighs, and looks up to find herself in the science fiction section. “I like him a lot, Mom.”

“Okay,” her mom says, in a tone that reminds Jane of when she was fourteen and tearfully admitted she had a desperate crush on Kurt Fleming, who was the star of the junior league baseball team and didn't even know she was _alive_ , and even worse he started dating _Laurie Meyer_ who was the prettiest girl in school and coined the unimaginative nickname of 'plain Jane'.

Jane sighs again and pinches the bridge of her nose. She is _not_ fourteen any more.

“Is it... more than that?” her mom asks carefully.

“I don't know... He has an... ex.”

“ _Oh_ ,” her mother says, voicing turning cold.

“It's not like that. He hasn't seen her in years, and I don't know if he even knows where she is, but... they were together for a long time, and I think... I think she was the love of his life.”

“I see. Has he... told you he loves you?”

“No, we're not really... like that.”

“Hm.”

“What?”

Her mother sighs. “I just don't want you to get hurt, sweetheart.”

“He isn't going to hurt me.”

She 'hms' again. “I hope not.”

-

She times her arrival to be there exactly on time – early is too awkward and she's not fashionable enough to be late.

“Lady Foster,” Tony says as he greets her at the door. “May I take your hat and coat?”

Jane down at her jeans and sweater. “Did the party start early?”

He grins. “Are you suggesting I'm drunk, Foster? I'll have you know that I'm _always_ like this.” 

“Poor Pepper,” she murmurs.

He quirks an eyebrow and sweeps his arm towards the living area. “Party's through there.”

Bruce is sitting on the couch looking at his laptop when she walks in.

“Hey,” she says, putting her bag down on the ground. She did eventually find him a gift, and she felt pretty good about it when she bought it, but she's rapidly losing faith in the idea.

He starts a little and looks up at her. “Hey!” he says and pats the cushion next to him.

“Happy birthday,” she says, and after an awkward moment kisses him on the cheek.

He glances down at his lap for a moment and smiles. “Thanks. Tony won't let me do anything. I'm barely allowed to get up.”

She nudges his arm. “You don't have to do anything on your birthday, that's the rule.”

“That's not been my experience...” he murmurs. It makes her wonder what past birthdays have been like for him.

“You're _late_!” she hears Tony call.

“We're three minutes late,” Steve says.

“That's three minutes of partying _lost_.”

“Because the party doesn't start until... ugh, actually I'm not going to finish that.”

Darcy cackles loudly as they walk in. “Banner! How's it feel to be forty two?”

“Old.”

“It would, yeah.”

Bruce pulls a face at her and laughs.

“Happy birthday,” Steve says, putting his hands on Darcy's shoulders and steering her towards the couch. “How's it been so far?”

Bruce tips his head to one side. “Yeah, it's been... it's been okay. Tony's starting to wear on me a little.”

“He... means well. I guess,” Steve says.

“I guess. So, how have you been? After, you know... and then with the press conference, we haven't really talked.”

It's been a couple of weeks since Barnes skipped town, and Darcy confided in Jane that Steve hadn't taken it very well. It makes Jane's stupid problems seem even stupider.

“Yeah, I'm okay. It was a little difficult at first, but...” Steve shakes his head and Jane notices how Darcy slips her hand against his thigh. “Anyway, we're not here for my whining.”

“Truer words,” Tony says, breezing by with glasses of wine for everyone. “Pep's going to be back in a few minutes, then presents!”

Bruce's eyes go wide. “What? I said not to...”

Tony pats him on the shoulder. “As if I'd ever listen to something like that.”

Bruce turns and looks at the rest of them. “Okay, but you didn't...”

Steve pulls a face and shrugs. Bruce looks at Jane and she smiles. “Sorry.”

Bruce sighs and crosses his arms over his chest. “This makes me feel very uncomfortable.”

“Tough,” Tony says, and flounces away when Jarvis announces that Pepper's in the elevator.

Bruce looks at Jane. “You said you weren't going to get me anything...”

She can't help but notice the look that passes between Darcy and Steve. “Well, I lied. Sorry.”

“I don't need anything...” Bruce repeats in a defeated tone.

The short, clipped sounds of Pepper's heels on the hard floor announce her arrival, and she sheds her shoes and her jacket as soon as she gets into living room. “Happy birthday, Bruce,” she says, with that polished sort of smile that she always has.

“Thanks,” Bruce says, and downs his glass of wine in one.

“Okay, presents!” Tony says. “Open mine first,” he adds, and drops a red and yellow wrapped box in Bruce's lap.

Steve's raised his eyebrows. “Iron Man themed wrapping paper?”

“Yeah, sorry I didn't have it ready for your birthday.”

“That is completely all right,” Steve says, very diplomatically.

“Wait, so this is everyone?” Jane asks. Her worst fear, she guesses, is that Tony would have found Betty and brought her here, and she thought the likelihood was pretty high. She probably shouldn't have said anything, though, that seems kind of weird.

Tony shrugs. “Barton said he'd try to make it, but I doubt it. Sorry, Bruce.”

“That's fine,” he says, scraping his nails against the tape on the box. Tony shoves his shoulder, and he starts tearing into it. “Hey, _The Twilight Zone_! I love this show, thank you, Tony.”

“All five seasons, lots of bonus features, too,” Tony says. Pepper hands him an envelope and he presents it to Bruce. “Also, we got you this.”

“Hey, a card,” Bruce murmurs as he opens the envelope. He laughs at the card, a hokey Avengers card for kids that says, 'You are 4!' with a '2' added on the end in black marker. A little piece of paper slips out and falls on the floor. He frowns as he leans down to retrieve it. “What's...” He looks at whatever's written on it. “What's this?” he says softly.

“It's a...” Tony actually looks a little nervous. “It's a donation to a domestic abuse charity in your name. It was Pep's idea.”

“Oh,” Bruce says quietly, his mouth twisting. “A hundred thousand dollars?”

“I researched which charities were the best and what their needs were,” Pepper says. “It seemed like a helpful amount.”

“Oh,” Bruce repeats, biting his lip. “I don't know what to say...” he murmurs. “Thank you.”

“We thought, you know, it'd mean more to you that some overpriced bit of crap,” Pepper says.

“Hey, it would have been a great bit of overpriced crap!” Tony says, looking up at Pepper with a scowl. Bruce laughs shakily and Jane really kind of wants to put her arm around him, but she can't, so she just pats him on the shoulder. He looks at her and smiles, though his eyes look a little pink.

“Hey, so, uh, you've really raised the bar, Tony,” Steve says awkwardly. “I wish I'd gone first, now.”

“Sorry your present isn't good enough,” he says, and Steve rolls his eyes. 

He hands Bruce a silvery wrapped present that's flat and rectangular with a nervous smile. “I, uh, didn't know what else to do...”

Bruce takes a deep breath and seems to shake off Pepper's gift. “I'm sure whatever it is, it's great.”

Steve makes an uncertain noise as Bruce rips the paper off, pulling at his fingers nervously. “Is it weird? It's weird--”

“Wow,” Bruce says, looking down at a drawing of himself. “Wow, Steve.”

“Um,” Steve says, “good wow?”

“Yes, Steve, good wow,” Bruce says carefully and smiles at him. He's always very careful with other people's feelings, especially Steve's. Jane likes that.

Tony leans over and squints at the picture. “Damn, Rogers, I knew you could draw cartoons, but I didn't know you could do _that_.” 

Jane has to agree – the drawing is halfway between caricature and realism, capturing the amused but slightly put out look that is so often on Bruce's face, his head tipped to one side, glasses slipping down his nose, his arms crossed over his chest. The background is fairly sparse, with just a few vague shapes and the words 'sciency things?' written by Bruce's elbow.

“Well, that's clearly worth _at least_ a hundred thousand,” Tony says.

“He fussed about this for weeks,” Darcy says, and Steve's starting to go pretty pink now. She shoulder bumps him and reaches into his bag. “I got you something too, because personally I think it's pretty crappy when people get together and suddenly you only get _one_ present from them.” She glances briefly at Steve's watch, which was a joint effort between Jane and Bruce – she figured that Steve would like a futuristic watch, and Bruce chose the purple one.

Steve taps Darcy on the leg and she places a box on Bruce's lap.

“Okay...” Bruce murmurs, tearing into it. He gets a large section of the paper free, and tips his head to one side, looking almost exactly like Steve's drawing. “Oh my God,” he says, pulling the paper free. Two green plastic fists sit in the middle of the packaging. “Hulk hands?”

“Did you really think I was going to get you a serious present? I mean, me? When you bang them they say something, go on, try them.”

“Oh my God, _try them_ ,” Tony adds.

“Okay,” Bruce says, flipping the box over to locate the twist ties. He fiddles with them for a few seconds then turns it back over and tries to pull them out. “Why won't they...” he mutters, turning the box on its side and frowning at it.

“Do you want me to do that?” Steve asks.

“Uh, sure,” Bruce says and hands it over.

Steve takes the box and works his fingers underneath the bottom of one of the fists and gives it a tug. A bunch things snap and it comes free. He hands it to Bruce and does the same thing for the other one. “Sometimes you just have to brute force things,” he says.

Bruce puts the fists on and grins. He knocks them together, and a growly voice says, 'Hulk smash!' “How did I not see that coming?”

“It could be like a warning system when people are pissing you off,” Darcy suggests.

Bruce looks thoughtful for a moment, then looks at Tony and thumps them together again.

“What? I literally have not done anything yet,” Tony says with wide eyes.

“Haven't you?” Bruce says. “ _Haven't you?_ ”

Tony leans back a little. “What? No. You're freaking me out, stop it.”

Bruce laughs and sets the fists down on the floor. “Thanks, Darcy.”

Darcy preens a little, then elbows Jane. 

“What? Oh...” Jane mutters, and reaches for her bag. After all these funny and thoughtful presents, hers seems even stupider. She gets the present out anyway, and hands it to Bruce. He looks at her for a second before opening it.

“ _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ ,” he says, smiling a little. “Because... I'm forty two?”

“Yeah, uh, it seemed funny at the time? Have you read it?”

He nods. “Oh yeah, but I never had a nice hardbound copy like this.” He looks up and smiles. “Thank you.”

“That's okay...” she murmurs.

Tony claps his hands together and jumps up. “Okay! Now that's over, let's break out the food and booze!”

Tony gets him a carrot cake birthday cake, which Steve wrinkles his nose at until Darcy feeds him some of the icing, and Tony mutters about him being an overgrown five year old.

“You don't really have room to talk on that...” Bruce says.

Tony glares and jabs his fingers at Bruce, “I'll let that go because of your senility.”

“You're older than me!” he calls back, but Tony just turns to the bar with a huff and starts mixing drinks.

“Tequila, Bruce?” he asks after a moment.

Bruce pulls a face. “No, tequila doesn't really agree with me.”

“Don't want to get another lap dance, then?”

Jane blinks and looks at Bruce, who slides down the couch a little. “What?”

“I, uh.” He scratches at his stubble and chuckles. “It was Steve's bachelor party and I was drunk.”

“It was _amazing_ ,” Tony says, bringing a tray of drinks over. “They discussed her education. Actually, I heard that she went back to grad school to study sociology.”

“That's nice,” Bruce murmurs, grabbing a bottle of beer off the tray.

“Yeah, I guess you inspired her or something.”

“Mm,” Bruce says, and takes a sip of his beer, glancing at Jane out of the corner of his eye. She smirks a little.

Pepper throws an arm around Tony's shoulders. “Tony, you're making Bruce uncomfortable.”

Tony turns his head so that their noses are almost touching. “Am I?” He looks back at Bruce. “Am I?”

“Yes. Steve too, probably.”

Tony looks around at Steve, who's been quietly listening to everything from his spot on the couch with Darcy and a plate of food. “Are you uncomfortable, Steven?”

“I'm always uncomfortable around you,” he says, “but you've got good food, so...” He shrugs and Darcy laughs and lays her head on his shoulder.

“Steve is easily pleased,” she says.

Jane really shouldn't drink tequila, but she does. Tequila makes her giggly and liable to say stupid things, and she feels like she might say something _very_ stupid tonight, so she stays pretty quiet all evening, as everyone else bickers and jokes with each other, and Darcy forces Steve to dance with her to the music that Tony puts on. Bruce and Tony seem to be cheerfully arguing about something.

“Jane,” Pepper says, leaning against the armrest near where Jane's sitting. “Are you okay?”

Jane looks up. “Hm? Oh, yeah, alcohol makes me... sleepy.”

“Okay...” Pepper murmurs, though she hardly looks convinced. “I hope this isn't all too uncomfortable for you.”

“What? Why would it be uncomfortable?” she says, trying not to sound suspicious, but probably failing. On the other hand, Pepper pretty is drunk, so she probably doesn't have too much to worry about.

“Oh, you know, with... me and Tony, and Steve and Darcy.” She gestures at where Darcy is valiantly trying to get Steve follow along with her, but her footwork is bit unsteady and Steve is just laughing at her. “They're enough to make anyone feel sick. And with Thor, I mean... Hm...” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and smiles. “I'm making this worse, aren't I?”

Jane shrugs. “It's okay. Anyway, it's Bruce's birthday, so...”

“Yeah. You know, I wonder how he feels, with Betty and all...”

“Betty?” Jane sits up a little straighter. She'd been kind of expecting Dr Ross to walk in any second, but it's been hours now and she was starting to forget about it. Well, not any more. “Has he, uh... seen her?”

“No, and that's the problem.” Pepper waves her glass around and some wine slops over the edge. “I mean, he must want to, right? But he hasn't said anything about it, and I told Tony not to get involved in stuff that doesn't concern him, but I wonder...” She purses her lips for a moment, then shakes her head. “Anyway... refill?”

Jane shrugs. “Sure.”

-

When it gets close to midnight, Darcy announces that her and Steve are going to go home. Tony nods vaguely as he debates something with Bruce, and Pepper says that she'll box up some food for them.

“Score,” Darcy murmurs.

“You can't go yet!” Jane says, flailing to grab Darcy's arm and missing.

Darcy blinks. “Why not?”

“Because if you guys go and I stay behind, it's going to be weird.”

“So, leave with us. We took the bike over, but I'll hail a cab for you.”

Jane pouts. “I don't... want to go yet...” she mutters.

Darcy rolls her eyes. “Oh my God, what are we, tenth graders? We're not sticking around just to vasci-- falis--”

“Facilitate,” Steve supplies.

“--your drunken hook-up,” Darcy finishes.

Jane pouts some more but it leaves Darcy cold. “Nope, I'm immune to anything less than Steve's puppy dog eyes these days.”

Steve smiles sympathetically. “Sorry.”

Jane crosses her arms over her chest and huffs as Darcy and Steve say their goodbyes. Bruce comes over a few minutes and flops down on the couch beside her. He looks happy.

“Hey,” he murmurs, “you okay?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that? I'm fine,” she says. Bruce frowns a little and she sighs. “Sorry. I shouldn't drink so much. Never ends well.”

He smiles. “Sometimes it ends well,” he says, and raises his eyebrows. Drinking is what got them into this in the first place, and as he looks at her with soft eyes, she can't say that he's wrong.

“Do you want to... go to my room?” he asks quietly.

“Um...” She looks at Tony and Pepper, who look like they're not too far away from going to _their_ room. “Yeah.”

Bruce pushes himself up and Jane gets up to head to the elevator. “Hey, thanks for tonight, Tony,” Bruce says, “I think I'm going to head to bed. Jane's gotta get home, too.”

“Lightweights,” Tony calls back.

Bruce laughs and turns back to Jane. He grabs the book she got him off the coffee table as he passes and makes it over to her as the elevator doors open. They get in and he leans over and presses the button for his floor, then straightens up and smiles at her.

“Sorry for a stupid present, by the way,” she says.

“I love it,” he says, and leans in to kiss her. They spend a couple of minutes making out, until Jarvis loudly announces that they have 'arrived at their destination'. Bruce pulls away and looks up at the ceiling. “Sorry, Jarvis,” he says, and takes her hand to lead her out.

“Quite all right, sir,” Jarvis replies. “Happy birthday.”

Bruce laughs as he opens his door. “Thanks, Jarvis.” He puts the book down on a table and turns to her. “Thanks for... coming over tonight.”

“Of course I came over, why wouldn't I?” she says, and shuts the door behind them, before leaning up and pulling him in for a kiss.

He drops his palms to her hips and presses against her a little. “I dunno. It's been a long time since I've celebrated my birthday.”

“I'm sorry,” she murmurs, and starts fiddling with the buttons of his collar.

He shakes his head. “It's fine, it doesn't matter any more.”

She nods slowly, unbuttoning his shirt down to his breast bone. “So... not too sad about not getting... another lap dance?”

“Oh God,” he says, screwing his face up as he laughs. “I didn't... enjoy it, really. You know, I just...”

She starts pushing him over to the bed. “You don't have to justify it to me.”

He pulls a face. “Ah, I can't talk to you about strippers, I'm sorry, it's too awkward.”

She laughs and he catches her hands as the backs of his legs hit the edge of the bed, pulling her in, and slides a hand into her hair as he brings their mouths together. She unbuttons the rest of his shirt and pushes it off his shoulders. She can feel him smile against her mouth, and gives him a light shove onto the bed.

She pulls off her sweater as Bruce shucks out of his pants, and then starts on her jeans. She's really never been comfortable with taking her clothes off in front of others, but she's getting better at it. Bruce is pretty comfortable with nudity – his own and others – and she's trying to take her cue from him. She is Sexy Woman, sexually dominant and able to take her bra off without blushing!

Well, she might not quite be there yet, but Bruce smiles up at her as she discards her bra and she gets onto the bed with him, moving over to straddle his lap. He runs his hands up her legs, rubbing his thumb against where she cut herself shaving this morning. She rocks her hips a little and he bites at his lip, closing his fingers around her thighs, guiding her movements a little.

“I guess you did get that lap dance after all,” she says.

“Oh God,” he says, covering his face with his hands. She presses down against the hard length of him, and he groans into his palms. “This is a lot better than, ahh, before,” he mumbles.

She grins and leans over to grab condoms off the night stand. She rips one of the packets open and the two of them struggle to deal with getting their underwear off for a minute before she rolls the condom on him.

She leans back up to kiss him, pressing her mouth to his bottom lip for a moment before he tucks his chin down and deepens the kiss. She spreads her legs wider in his lap and sinks down onto him, Bruce's breath stuttering against her skin as he groans. He presses his hands to her waist and rolls them onto their sides, slipping his arms up to circle her back. He rolls his hips against hers and drops his mouth down to her neck, his stubble rasping against her skin as he drags his teeth over her pulse gently. She's probably going to have a rash by tomorrow, but she doesn't much care right now.

There's a knock at the door. Bruce grunts and lifts his head. “What was that?” he murmurs.

“The door,” she replies, and bites down on her lip as a shudder goes through her.

“Bruce?” Tony calls through the door, and Bruce groans. Jane buries her face in his chest and tries to be as still as possible.

“Yes?” Bruce calls back, voice thin.

“Uh, yeah, so...” Tony sounds pretty drunk and vague, and Jane has to bite back a whimper, scrunching her toes in the sheets. “Me an' Pep are gonna be going away for a trade conference for a while... I forgot to tell you... Forgot all about it, actually...”

“Okay, Tony,” Bruce says, his voice rising in pitch. He runs a hand over her hair soothingly. “Have fun!”

“Ugh, it's gonna suck, I _hate_ these things, but Pep says we have to go...” Tony begins to ramble, and Bruce groans, sounding so defeated that Jane can't help but start giggling into his chest.

“Shhh,” he murmurs, pressing his fingers into her shoulder blade, but she just starts laughing harder. “Shhh,” he insists, and when she tips her head up to look at him, he's struggling to keep a straight face.

“Did you say something?” Tony asks through the door.

“Nope,” Bruce says, screwing his face up. “Actually, I'm kind of tired, could we... talk about this tomorrow?”

“Oh, sure... we're leaving at, like, midday? I think so, at least...”

“Okay!” Bruce says. “Then I'll talk to you tomorrow, good night, Tony!”

“Oh, yeah, hm... Night.” There's a pause, and then Tony adds, “Happy birthday.”

“Thank you!” Bruce says, and bites his lips, looking pained.

They wait for a little while, totally still, until Jarvis says, “He is gone, sir.”

Bruce lets out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Jarvis.” He looks down at Jane and pulls a face. “Sorry.”

She grins and pushes herself up to kiss him again and they both groan at the movement. He reaches down and presses a couple of fingers to her clit, and it's not long before they're panting and grinding against each other.

“Jane,” he groans, pressing his forehead against hers.

She is _so close_ , she can barely respond. “Yeah?” she breathes.

His eyelashes flutter and he doesn't answer, just squeezes his eyes and presses his fingers into her harder, and she swears that they come at almost the exact same time, which is a first for her. She thought that pretty much only ever happened in movies. 

They lie there for a few minutes, before Bruce pulls out with a slight huff and rolls onto his back. “Uh,” he says, running his hands through his hair. “Sorry about... Tony.”

She snorts and rubs her face. “It's okay, it's not your fault. It didn't, uh, make anything less enjoyable...”

He smiles and turns his head to her. “I guess I've got the whole tower to myself for a while, huh?”

“I guess so,” she says.

He twists his mouth thoughtfully and looks like he's about to say something, but then he takes a breath and pushes himself up. “I'm gonna, uh... wash up.”

“Okay,” she says.

He smiles again, and leans down to kiss her. “Back in a minute.”

“'kay,” she repeats, and stretches out on the bed as he heads to the bathroom. She could definitely get used to this, she thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few items for your viewing pleasure: ['Bruce' playing with Darcy's present](http://boombangbing.tumblr.com/post/53009072669/reblogging-for-reasons-that-should-become-clear) and [an in-universe article about the medical uses of gamma radiation](http://boombangbing.tumblr.com/post/52844591699/mediavengers-scientific-american-march-2013) by MediAvengers that was a really cool coincidence while I was writing this chapter!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Warning: a brief mention of past suicide attempts.**

The morning finds Bruce with his head buried between Jane's legs. Her calves are resting against his shoulder blades as he works on her clit with his tongue. She's making soft gasping sounds, clutching at his hair, and he presses in harder, eliciting a higher pitch whine.

There's a knock at the door. “Bruce, you up?” Tony calls.

Bruce groans and starts to lift his head. Jane tugs harder at his hair and he pauses for a moment before lowering his head again, to Jane's obvious approval. Tony can _wait_.

“Bruce?” Tony calls again. Jane moans quietly and he grips her thigh, pulling her up a little and resettling between her legs. Her moaning goes high-pitched again though still, hopefully, quiet enough that Tony can't hear her from outside the door. If not, Bruce is going to have some very awkward explaining to do.

She pushes her hand deeper into his hair as the knocking continues, and it's getting kind of hard not to rut against the bed in time to her soft moans, but he's a forty two year old man, and he can probably hold out for a few more minutes. Probably.

Her panting reaches a crescendo, thighs shuddering as Tony calls, “Jesus, Bruce, it's ten am, are you really still asleep?”

He gives her clit one last flick with his tongue and lifts his head. “Just a-- ahem, just a minute!” he calls. “I'm... doing my teeth.”

Jane snorts and rolls off the bed, crouching down to retrieve her underwear and clothes. He grabs her shirt from where it's flung over a chair, and brings it over to her as she slips into the bathroom. She takes it and looks down at his erection with a smirk.

“Later?” he asks, with a hopeful expression.

She grins and leans over to kiss him.

“Bruce! My plane is leaving in an hour, I'd like to be done with this by then,” Tony calls.

Bruce rolls his eyes and Jane closes the bathroom door over as he goes back into the bedroom, shoving her bag under his desk as he goes. He grabs a robe thrown over the end of the bed and pulls it on, cinching the belt tight enough that he hopes his erection situation won't be noticeable. Christ, he doesn't think he's ever answered the door with a hard on before.

“Hey, Tony,” he says, as he opens the door.

Tony throws up his hands. “Finally!”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “It was my birthday yesterday, I'm allowed to sleep in.”

“The operative word being 'yesterday',” Tony says.

“Okay, Tony, I'm sorry,” Bruce says, leaning against the door in a way that he hopes doesn't look really awkward and unnatural. 

“You should be,” Tony says, then pauses, his face growing serious.

Shit, maybe this is about something important. Is Ross back again? Something with Steve and Darcy? Is Pepper okay? “Is everything okay?” Bruce asks.

“Oh, yeah...” Tony murmurs, and pulls a folded up piece of paper out of his pocket. “It's just... I got this in my inbox today.” He hands it over. “You know, with Stark security and all it took a while to make it through...”

“What is it?” Bruce asks, unfolding it.

“Uh,” Tony says as Bruce starts to read what's on the paper. 

It's an email. It starts, 'Bruce' and as his eyes skitter down the page, ends, 'love, Betty'. He blinks.

“It's from Betty,” Tony says.

“Yeah.”

“She sent it a while ago, I'm sorry I only just got it. Wish it had got through yesterday, would've made a great birthday present.”

“Yeah.” He looks at the email and frowns. There's a phone number in it. “Is that a... what area code is that?”

“UK cell phone,” Tony says. “She's got a research position at UCL.”

Bruce looks up at him and Tony shrugs sheepishly. “I googled her.”

“Okay,” Bruce murmurs. “I...”

“You should call her. Free long distance on my phone plan.”

“Uh huh.” He runs his fingers through his hair and tries to shake the vague sense of confusion off. It's not confusing, it's a pretty straight forward situation, but he can't quite... “What time is it there at the moment?”

“Jarvis?” Tony asks.

“It is currently four in the afternoon, sir.”

“Plenty of time to call,” Tony adds.

“Yeah...” Bruce shakes his head and looks back at Tony. “Yeah. Thank you for...”

“Oh man, of course,” Tony says. “Look, me and Pep are leaving for Berlin soon, but call me if you need to anything, okay? I can guarantee that I'll welcome the distraction.”

“Sure...” Bruce says. “Okay, thank you.”

“No problem.” He stands there for a moment, looking at Bruce, then nods. “Okay, good luck, I'll see you in a week.”

“Yeah, see you then,” Bruce murmurs, smiling at him for a second for closing the door. He turns around and leans against it. “Jesus,” he mutters.

The bathroom door opens and Jane steps out slowly. Fuck, he'd practically forgotten she was in there.

“I should go,” she says quietly.

“Did you...?”

“Yeah, I-- I heard. You should call her.”

“Um...”

She grabs her bag from under the desk and swings it over her shoulder. “Jarvis, is the coast clear?”

“Not quite, Dr Foster. I will tell you 'when'.”

“Okay,” she murmurs, twisting her fingers together.

“Um,” Bruce repeats, looking at the piece of paper in his hand, then at her.

“It's good that she-- that you're going to see her,” Jane mutters, eyes landing somewhere around his middle.

“Uh, yeah...” he says. “Do you wanna... should I--”

“Dr Foster,” Jarvis interrupts. “Mr Stark has returned to the ninetieth floor.”

“Thanks, Jarvis,” she says, and looks at Bruce. “I'm going to go.”

“Oh, okay...” Bruce says, running his fingers through his hair. “I'll... I'll call you later?”

Jane shrugs and opens the door. “Sure.”

“Okay,” he says and watches at the door as she walks down the hall. She waves to him before she turns the corner out of sight and he sighs and closes the door again. He looks at the piece of paper again and decides that he needs a shower.

\- 

He stays in the shower for nearly half an hour, just letting the water beat down on his head. His dick hasn't quite got the message that today has done a one eighty from good to weird, so he tries to work himself over in the most perfunctory way possible, not thinking about anyone at all. He mostly manages it.

The email is still on his bed (where else would it be?) when he comes out of the bathroom, and after drying his hair a little, he picks it up and reads it again.

> _Bruce,_
> 
> _I'll keep this brief, because I have no idea how to even start an email like this. I saw you on the news tonight, and you were so brave. I know you were involved in what happened in New York last year, but I can barely get my head around seeing you and Tony Stark together!_
> 
> _Anyway, I found Stark's publicist's email, and I hope this gets passed on. He seems like he's a good friend to you. If you'd like to talk, my email address is: e.ross@ucl.ac.uk, and my phone number is: 001447955987555._
> 
> _I miss you._
> 
> _Love,  
>  Betty._

“Fuck,” he mutters. This is all fucked up. He should be happy! He should be bursting with excitement! Everything's better now, he could-- they could--

But he just feels like everything's about to get ruined.

“Fuck,” he repeats. He could be a coward and ignore it for a while, just like he's been a coward in never making the first move towards her, or be slightly less of a coward and email her. Or he could grow up and call. She deserves that much from him, after everything.

He picks up his phone and dials. It takes a second to click through and start ringing and he holds his breath.

Betty answers after six rings. “Hello?” she says. She sounds a little nervous.

He squeezes his eyes shut and swallows. “Betty.”

“Oh, Bruce, when I saw it was an international call, I hoped...”

“I just got your email today,” he says, “Stark security and stuff.”

“Sure.”

There's a long pause and then they start talking at once.

“I--”

“Can--”

“Sorry, you--”

“No, go ahead...”

“No, you were gonna--”

“Bruce,” Betty says firmly. It makes him smile; if anyone could cut through all his crap when he was younger and more obsessive, it was her. “Say what you were going to say.”

“Okay. I wanted to say... I missed you too.”

He can hear the smile in her voice. “I cried when I saw you on the TV.”

“I felt like crying too, for some of it,” he quips, and wonders how big of an influence Tony has been on him.

She laughs a little. “I'm sorry I missed your birthday.”

“Only just.”

“Yeah... Bruce, I'm going to come to New York.”

“When?”

“As soon as I-- let me look for flights.”

“Okay,” he murmurs and listens to her typing.

After a couple of minutes she says, “Oh! There's a flight at eight tonight, it's not even that expensive.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah, in three hours.”

“What time is that going to land in... in New York?”

“Ten thirty.”

“This evening?”

“Yeah... Should I book it?”

“Yeah. I mean...” He pauses. “Don't you have to work?”

“This is more important,” she says. “Bruce, do you want me to come?”

He blinks. “Yes! God, I do, I'm just, I...”

“I know. Me too. Look, I'm going to book these tickets and I'm going to have to leave now to get to Heathrow in time. I'll, uh, call you when I arrive.”

“I'll meet you, what airport are you flying in to?”

“JFK.”

“Okay, I'll, I'll be there.”

“Okay. I'll see you tonight.”

“Okay.”

“I love you, Bruce,” Betty says softly.

He takes a breath. “I love you too.”

-

When Bruce moved in, Tony said he could borrow any of the cars in the garage, with the exception of the 'hot rod red' one. Bruce didn't take him up on the offer because he didn't want to abuse Tony's generosity any more than he already had, and because he had nowhere he needed to drive to.

But he's glad now, because picking Betty up from the airport in a car is a little more impressive than them having to get a taxi back. Plus he doesn't want to get into a conversation with a cabbie about the Hulk or Tony or Captain America.

He surveys the sports cars and BMWs and sighs. “Jarvis, are there any less... flashy cars? Maybe without custom plates.”

“In the back, sir,” Jarvis says. “Mr Stark calls it his sad car collection.”

The 'sad cars' are pretty fancy looking too, but not as offensively Tony, and Bruce selects a grey Audi. This is New York, at least, it's not like people won't be coming to the airport in nice cars.

“DUM-E, fetch Dr Banner the keys,” Jarvis says, and the claw robot rolls over to a cabinet and bashes around in there for a while before coming back with a set of keys.

“Thank you, D-” Bruce starts, but Jarvis interrupts.

“DUM-E, those are not the right keys.”

DUM-E whirs sadly and goes back to the cabinet to bash around some more. Several sets fall out, but he eventually pulls out another set and brings them over to Bruce.

“Thank you, DUM-E.”

DUM-E spins his claw at Bruce, which Bruce guesses means he's happy.

“DUM-E, you have a mess to clean up,” Jarvis says, and the claw droops.

-

He leaves hours early for the airport and stakes out a seat at Arrivals. He's brought a book with him – _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ , which he tries not to think about too much – and reads it between checking the board of arriving flights. When it finally gets to ten fifteen, he gets up stands by the railing with everyone else.

He fidgets with his hands as he waits, watching person after person drag the suitcases past, studying each woman's face. He knows it's not going to be Betty, because her plane hasn't even landed yet, but he can't stop herself. It's been three years since he's seen her, what if he doesn't remember her face. He can't imagine ever forgetting her, but what if...?

Fifty minutes later, people start coming through from her flight, or at least he assumes so, judging by their accents, and he grips the railing, holding his breath. 

It's eleven fifteen when she finally walks out, pulling a small red suitcase behind her.

“Betty?” he calls, and his voice comes out smaller than he meant it to, but she hears him and weaves through the people to meet him on the other side of the railing.

“Bruce,” she says.

He looks at her – he didn't forget her face, but he did almost forget how tall she is.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies.

He smiles and they stare at each other for a moment, before she leans over the railing and kisses him. He lifts his hand, letting it hover for a second, before sliding it into her hair and pulling her closer. She drops her hand to his waist and makes a little noise as he traces his tongue over her bottom lip.

This morning he was kissing Jane.

He takes a step back and looks at her suitcase. “Is that all you brought?”

“Didn't have time to pack much else.”

He nods. “Okay. Should we go?”

“Yeah.” She walks parallel to the railing and meets him on the side, another moment of awkwardness stretching out between the two of them.

He points to the exit. “I'm parked in the parking lot.”

“Okay,” she says, and follows him out.

“ _This_ is your car?” she asks, a few minutes later, when they get to the Audi.

“Well, it's Tony's, I'm just borrowing it.”

“Tony Stark,” she says.

He smiles. “Yeah. This is one of his least expensive.”

She pulls a face. “That makes me feel kind of sick.”

He laughs and nods to the passenger side door. “Get in.”

They don't talk much as he concentrates on figuring out how to get out of the parking lot (maybe he has an IQ of 170 – whatever good that has been to him – but parking lots confound him). Betty pretends not to be laughing at him as he mutters under his breath, squinting at the various contradictory signs.

Fuck, he's getting old.

“So, what's Tony Stark like?” she asks, once they're safely out on the road.

Bruce smiles. “Annoying. Really overly generous. Uh... annoyingly handsome. I look like a troll compared to him.”

“No, you don't,” she says, tutting at him.

He smiles down at the steering wheel. When they stop at a traffic light, he pulls off his glasses and starts polishing them with his sleeve.

“I like the glasses,” Betty says, “you look like a distinguished professor in them.”

“A silver lining to every cloud,” he murmurs, slipping them back on.

“I thought you looked especially nice in them at the press conference,” she adds, as the light turns green and he presses down on the accelerator again.

“Yeah...”

“My favourite part was when you tripped up the steps. Very Jennifer Lawrence of you.”

“Who?”

“Jennifer Lawrence? She's an actress.”

He shrugs.

“The Hunger Games?”

“Uh...” He narrows his eyes. “Vaguely?”

“Well, I'll let you off for not knowing your current pop culture.”

“Thanks.”

She nods and yawns. “Sorry,” she murmurs, stretching her arms out. “It's about five in the morning for me.”

“Get some sleep,” he says. “We've got about twenty minutes before we're there.”

She yawns again and smiles self-deprecatingly. “Okay, thanks.” She leans her head back against the seat and shuts her eyes, and Bruce takes a moment to think about how beautiful she is before turning back to the road.

She wakes again when they're a few minutes from the tower. She wrinkles up her nose as she shifts around in the seat and Bruce smiles. She clears her throat and opens her eyes.

“How long was I asleep?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

She nods and looks at the window. Her eyes widen. “Oh wow, I don't think I've ever seen Stark Tower this close at night.”

“It's pretty impressive,” Bruce says.

“Yeah...”

“More impressive on the inside,” he adds.

She frowns for a moment, and turns to look at him. “Wait a minute, is this where we're going? Do you live there?”

“Uh...” He twists his mouth. “Yeah.”

Betty looks at him unblinking for a second, before shaking her head. “Wow.”

Bruce chuckles. “You said that already.”

“It bears repeating.”

He drives down to the underground garage and swipes himself in with his key card.

“Good morning, Dr Banner, Dr Ross,” Jarvis says as they get out.

Bruce closes the door. “Morning?”

“It is twelve thirty in the morning, sir.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “Pedant,” he mutters.

“It is how I'm programmed, sir.”

Betty frowns. “What is that?”

“Tony's disembodied voice robot butler,” Bruce says, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

“Right,” she says, and tries to suppress another yawn.

“Come on,” he says, “you can... sleep in my room. Do you want anything to eat first?”

She shakes her head. “Ate on the plane. It wasn't very nice, but it was filling.”

When they get to his bedroom, she smiles down at his scattered clothing on the floor. “As untidy as ever, huh?”

He shrugs. “I try to tidy up, it just... gets like this.”

She laughs. “Sure.” She looks around at all his things – and he has a lot of them now, like a real adult male or something – and settles on the drawing of himself that Steve gave him.

“Wow, that's a really great drawing, who drew it?”

“Steve-- uh, Steve Rogers. It was for my birthday.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Captain America drew you it for your birthday?”

He nods. “Yeah, he's a great artist. That's what he wanted to do before...” He mimes flexing his arm. “The Hulk hands are from his wife.”

She looks at the green fists on his desk and smiles. “So what's, uh, Steve like?”

“He's a... he's a nice kid.”

Betty grins. “'Kid'? You call Captain America a 'kid'?”

“I know, I know,” Bruce says, “but once you know him a while, it's obvious that he really is kind of a kid. He's very earnest and very kind and _very_ idealistic. It's nice but he makes me feel very old sometimes.”

Betty laughs and shakes her head. Bruce crosses his arms over his chest then uncrosses them and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “The bathroom's just through there,” he says, nodding to behind her.

She turns and looks. “Okay, thanks. I feel pretty icky from the flight.”

She spends about half an hour in there while he sits on his bed and waits for her. He hears the toilet flushing, the tap and the shower going, and he feels like a damn kid, sitting on his bed in his untidy bedroom, with a girl in the bathroom. God, he either feels like an old man or a teenager, but never the good parts of either.

He takes a steadying breath as she comes back out, dressed in a grey t-shirt and pyjamas.

“Where should I...?” she asks.

“Oh!” He jumps up. “You can sleep in my bed.”

“Where are you going to sleep?” she asks, walking over.

“I'm not tired.”

She reaches out and takes his hand, rubbing her thumb against his palm. “I think we can share.”

“Um...” He looks down at their hands and sighs. “Yeah.”

She gets into his bed and wriggles under the covers while he changes into his own pyjamas. “I can't believe you're here right now,” he blurts out, as he pulls his t-shirt over his head.

“Me either,” she murmurs.

He smiles at her and she smiles back, cheek resting on her out-stretched arm. He takes a breath and gets into bed.

“I'm glad you called,” Betty says quietly, wrapping her other arm around his waist.

He closes a hand around the back of her head and breathes out. “Me too.”

-

It takes him hours to get to sleep – he'd have thought that he hadn't slept at all if it wasn't for being jerked awake by Betty as she gets out of bed in the late morning.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, “go back to sleep.”

He yawns into his fist and shakes his head. “'s fine. Want some breakfast?”

“I wouldn't mind.”

She seems amazed at everything as they move through the building, from the fancy high speed elevator to the sleek corridors to Tony's open plan bar/living room/deck thing that Bruce quickly shows her, and he realises how used to all of this he is now. He found the place astounding at first, but now it's all old news. He never thought that a place like this could be 'old news'.

They get into the vast kitchen and he goes over to fridge to get the milk. “Cereal?” he asks, enjoying the blast of cool air for a moment.

“Um, sure,” she mutters.

He puts the milk on the counter and looks around. “Jarvis, we got any Cheerios?”

“In the cupboard above the oven, sir.”

He looks up at the cupboard and sighs. He's only just going to be able reach the handle of that. Tony blames Pepper for putting things up there; he says she does it to piss him off, and Bruce has been present a few times as Pepper enjoys watching Tony struggle to reach jars of coffee that have mysteriously moved up there.

Betty comes over and pushes up on to her toes, opening the cupboard and pulling the box of cereal out.

“Thanks,” he says, grabbing a couple of bowls.

They eat almost in silence, except for a couple of comments by Betty about how amazing the place is. He doesn't really know what to say to that, so he just nods and makes affirmative noises. When they're done, he takes the bowls and puts them in the dishwasher, messing around with the machine for longer than really necessary.

“Bruce,” she says.

“Yeah?” he replies, closing the dishwasher door and turning it on. 

“Bruce,” she repeats, and when he turns around, she's right behind him.

God, she's beautiful.

He leans forward and kisses her. She slides her hands up under his t-shirt, mouth opening under his. He drops his hands to her hips, pressing against her harder. She pushes back just as hard; she was always pretty sexually aggressive, he loved that.

He loved everything about her, fifteen years ago.

Fifteen years is a long time. A long time to cling onto something.

He pulls away, the edge of the counter banging into his lower back. “Fuck.”

She takes a step back, blinking. “What's wrong? Is it Hulk?” She looks at his arm. “Where's your heart monitor?”

“I don't-- I don't need it any more.” He blows out a breath and rubs at his face. “It's not Hulk, it's...”

“There's somebody else,” she finishes for him.

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

“Me too. I think we need to have a real talk.”

He nods, eyes fixed on the ground. “Yeah. Let's go into the living room.”

-

“So,” Betty says, hands folded in her lap on the couch.

“Yeah...” He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “I should have told you yesterday.”

“And I should have told you too.”

He nods. “So, uh, did you get back together with, um... Leonard?”

She laughs. “Oh no, he ran a mile. It's a guy from work.”

“British guy?”

“Yeah.”

“You always liked British guys...” She told him once that the reason she first noticed him was because his hair was like Colin Firth's. Which was where the similarities ended.

She smiles. “What about you?”

“Oh, she's a... she's a friend of Darcy's-- um, Steve's wife.”

“Is it serious?”

“Wasn't supposed to be.” He purses his mouth and looks at her. “What about you?”

“I don't know. Maybe. I've been keeping him at a distance, a bit. Emotionally.”

“Yeah...”

“But it's nice, isn't it?” she adds.

“What is?”

She smiles calmly. “Having a relationship without all the baggage.”

He frowns, lifting his hand to his mouth and biting on his nails. “Yeah,” he says, muffled by his fingers. “I've, uh, I like being with her.”

“And she knows all about... you?”

“Oh yeah. After everything with the General, she definitely saw the worst side of me.”

“The General?” she repeats.

“Yeah, you know, when he...” He trails off, looking at her expression. “You didn't know.”

“ _No_. I try not to speak to my father. What did he do?”

“He... Well.” He picks at his nails. “He came after me again. He, um, threatened Jane-- my friend-- and I had to stay in the tower for a week in case he tried to... get me. That's why I 'came out' – Steve and Tony thought it was the only way to get him off my back. Become really visible, you know?”

Betty's face has turned increasingly angry as he continues and he decides to stop before she blows a fuse. “Sorry,” he murmurs.

“It's not _your_ fault.” She crosses her arms over her chest and fumes for a moment before taking a breath. “When you say 'the worst side' of you... how bad did it get?”

He was hoping she wouldn't ask that. “Well, I kind of... pulled away from everyone. I tried to... get rid of Hulk again. Experimented on myself. Jane found me, um, foaming at the mouth...”

“ _Bruce_!”

“I know...”

“Why would you even do that? That's what got you into this mess in the first place!”

“I _know_. It just... brought up a lot of old feelings about...” God, should he even tell her this? He shouldn't burden her with this kind of shit, but she's looking at him like her gaze is going to burn two holes through his head, and he's never been able to lie to her. “About not wanting to... be the Hulk, or failing that...”

“Failing that?” she prompts.

“Uh.” He looks down at his hands. “I've, um. I-I tried to... kill myself a couple of times,” he finally forces out, barely above a whisper. “After the last time I saw you,” he mumbles.

“Bruce...” She sniffs, eyes red-rimmed, and he scoots closer to her.

“Don't cry. Please don't cry. I'm okay now, I really am.”

She wipes at her eyes. “I can tell.” She takes his hand. “All of this is crazy, all these new people you know but it's good. It's good for you. I can tell.”

He nods. “It is.”

She sighs, rubbing her thumb across his palm. “Our lives have moved pretty far apart, haven't they?”

He rests his other hand over hers and squeezes. “Yeah.”

She looks a little sad for a moment, then leans over and kisses him on the cheek. “You know, I kind of skipped out at work. The last thing I want to do is get back on a plane, but I should go.”

As sad as he makes him to see her go so quickly, it's probably for the best. “Okay. Jarvis can book you a plane ticket. Do you want me to drive you back to the airport?”

“That'd be nice, I'll get dressed.” She gets up from the couch then pauses, hand falling to her pyjama bottoms. “I want to give you this first,” she says, slipping her hand into her pocket.

He sits forward. “What is it?”

She hands him a square wrapped object with a big bow on the front. “Happy birthday. Open it when I'm gone, okay?”

He frowns. “Okay...”

She smiles. “Okay, I'm gonna go get dressed.”

-

The drive back to the airport is weird; the whole day is weird. By the late afternoon, she's back on a plane and it's like none of it ever happened, except everything feels different. He feels different.

When he gets back home, he opens her gift. It's a disc, which he guesses he should have realised from the shape of the casing. There's a post it note on the front that says, 'I found this when I was going through some things. Love, Betty'. He pops out the disc and puts it in his laptop. When the computer prompts him to press play, his own face appears.

“Oh Jesus,” he mutters. He remembers filming this.

“ _Hey, Betty,_ ” the him on the screen says. “ _This is my fifth attempt at this, so let's hope this one's the one._ ”

A couple of years into living together, Betty had had to go on a three month research trip, leaving Bruce alone in their apartment in Virginia. He missed her terribly and he remembers having shamefully tried to talk her out of going. It caused some fraught, uncomfortable arguments between the two of them. He made this video six weeks in, because he guesses he thought it would be cute, but now he's pretty sure he was also trying to subtly manipulate her.

“ _So, everything's really great here..._ ” It wasn't. The General hassled him more than a few times when he could get to Bruce without Betty in the way. Bruce never told her about that. “ _Although I almost set the kitchen on fire yesterday, but was probably just a one off thing._ ”

He looks so _young_ , so alien and removed from the self-image he has of himself now, even though he would have been at least thirty three at the time – he guesses he's just aged a lot in the past seven years. His younger self rambles for a little longer, about how things are going and how much he loves her and misses her, and Bruce can see why she wanted him to watch it after she was gone – it's starting to make him cry. 

“ _I can't wait for you to get home, Betty. I really,_ really _miss you._ ”

He shuts it off and rubs at his face. He kind of hates having to look at his stupid, young face, but he guesses he needed to see it. Needed to really see that the him he was then and the him he is now are very different people. It's a good thing, though he probably won't feel like watching the video again for a very long time.

He's still a coward though, that hasn't changed. After dealing with some of the baggage and upset that the visit and the video dredged up, he spends a few days alone in the tower, mostly sleeping, eating, and watching TV – calling Jane is conspicuously absent from that thrilling routine.

“I'm a fucking coward, aren't I, Jarvis,” he asks the ceiling.

“Sir, I am programmed to not insult guests.”

“Very diplomatic.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He tugs at his hair and looks over at his cell phone sitting on the couch cushion next to him. “Fuck,” he mutters, and grabs the phone.

Jane answers after five rings. “Hey.”

“Hey, Jane.”

“Hey,” she repeats.

He bites his lip. “Hey. Do you... wanna come over tonight?”

“Um...”

“I mean, if you're busy, don't worry about it, I just thought...”

“No, no, I can come over...” She sounds guarded. He can't say that he blames her. “What time?”

“Six?”

“Okay, sure.”

“Okay.” He frowns to himself and picks at the hem of his shirt. “Uh... So I'll see you tonight?”

“Yeah, see you then.”

Damn, he might have really fucked this up. “Okay, bye.”

“Bye.”

He ends the call and sighs. “Fuck.”

-

He decides to cook her dinner. He's not altogether sure why, because he's not known for his cooking, but he's hoping that it's the thought the counts with efforts like these. Jarvis tries to help as much as he can, but even he starts to get annoyed by Bruce's scattiness. Honestly, like with parking lots, sometimes genius is of no benefit at all.

At five forty five, he leaves the stew he's making to simmer and goes back upstairs to change into something less ratty than what he normally slopes around in at home. He chooses the yellow shirt that Tony gave him way back after the Chitauri invasion and a pair of jeans. 

Jarvis announces that Jane has arrived just as Bruce finishes buttoning up the fiddly buttons of his fly. He tucks his shirt tails loosely into his waistband and tells Jarvis to let Jane off the elevator on Tony's main floor as he heads back there himself.

He gets there before her, obviously, only going down three floors while she's coming up ninety, and he tries to not look like a complete loser waiting at the elevator. 

He doesn't succeed at all.

The door slides open and he smiles hopefully. She frowns at him and looks her own clothes, worn out jeans and a sweatshirt.

“Oh,” she says, expression as guarded as her voice was on the phone. “I thought we were just going to have sex.”

He blinks. “Uh. We can... Do you wanna come in?”

She steps out of the elevator and closes one hand around her elbow, letting her other arm hang loose. She looks sad.

“Do you want to--” he starts.

“So what happened with Betty?” she says over him.

“Oh. Uh...” He thought he'd get some kind of gentle run up to discussing Betty and his mini disappearing act, but apparently not. Maybe it's better to rip the bandaid off now. Though it doesn't feel like it...

“Did you reconnect?” she asks.

“Yeah. She's actually... visited. She got a flight the same day, arrived in the evening...”

Jane tips her chin up. “All the way from England?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh huh. So what happened?”

Wow, when Jane's pissed, it's really kind of nerve-wracking. “We, uh. We... we kissed. And then we came back here and, uh...” He trails off to stop from stumbling over his words any more. Maybe Hulk should deal with this instead.

Then again, Bruce has had enough bad ideas to last him a lifetime.

She nods slowly. “So, you had sex.”

“No,” he says quickly.

“No?”

He shakes his head. “We slept in my bed for the night, but...”

Jane narrows her eyes. “So, where is she?”

“Back in London.”

“Okay...”

Damn it, this is mean, he needs to stop stringing this out. “The thing is, is that I was with Betty for a long time and it was the first relationship I ever got into, she was the first woman, the person I ever really connected to. It's really hard to let go of that.”

“Okay...”

“But, um, when I was kissing her I kept thinking how I was going to ruin everything, and uh... the thing is I've always... had trouble letting go of things – that's what got me into trouble most of my life – but sometimes it's good to let go. Sometimes it isn't giving up.” He takes a breath. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry if I did ruin everything.”

Jane frowns. “So--”

“Sir, your food is boiling over,” Jarvis says.

“Shit!” He dashes into the kitchen and finds that part of the stew now resides on the the oventop. “Shit,” he repeats, turning the burner off and sliding the pan to one side.

“You cooked?” Jane asks.

“Uh...” He pokes at the stew with a spoon and sighs. “In a manner of speaking. It's supposed to be Moqueca de Peixe – a friend of mine showed me how to make it when I lived in Brazil. Tried to show me.”

“Let me taste it.”

“Okay.” He dips the spoon in the still bubbling pan and scoops some out. “Careful, it's hot,” he says, holding it up to her mouth.

She takes a taste and wrinkles up her nose.

“No good?”

“Um.” She wipes at her nose and sniffs. “It's a bit hot.”

He lifts the spoon to his mouth and tastes it for himself. He coughs and grimaces. That is not how it tasted when Martina made it for him. “I think maybe I put in too many peppers...”

“Maybe,” she echoes.

He sighs and moves the pan over to the garbage disposal. “Fuck. I really wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Well... I think only the food is ruined,” she says behind him.

It takes him a moment to figure out what she means. He turns around and looks at her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She takes a couple of steps over to him and puts her hands on his waist. “I think so.”

He leans forward and kisses her, sliding his fingers into her hair and pulling her closer. She pushes him back against the counter and places a knee firmly between his legs, her hands climbing up to his shoulder blades.

He tips his head back a little. “Should we, uh... order takeout?”

“Yeah.” She presses her mouth to his again quickly. “But later.”

“Yeah, later,” he agrees, tugging her against him.

-

When they get back out of his bedroom, they eat pizza and drink wine in front of one of Tony's TVs, going through his movie collection. He guesses that the both of them are pretty relaxed after sex and food and alcohol, because at some point they fall asleep and only wake up when Jarvis yells at them – or turns the volume up on his voice or whatever it is that robot butlers do.

“Dr Banner!”

Bruce starts awake, banging the back of Jane's head with his forearm.

“Oof,” she murmurs, rolling forward out of his arms.

“Sorry,” he says, rubbing at his eyes. “What's--”

“I am sorry for waking you up, Dr Banner, Dr Foster,” Jarvis says, “but I thought that you should know that Mr Stark and Ms. Potts are in the elevator on their way up.”

He sits up. Jane looks at him with wide eyes. “What?”

“They have arrived back from their trip, sir.”

“That was today?”

“Yes, sir. I am sorry, I thought you were already aware.”

“Uh...” He looks back at Jane, who's already scrambling for her bag and shoes. “What floor are they on?”

“The fifteenth.”

He pushes him up, grabbing a stray sock of hers. “You should probably...”

She stuffs the sock in her pocket, nodding. “Yeah, yeah, where should I--?”

“There's a service elevator over there,” he says. “It'll let you out around the back of the building.”

“Twenty first floor,” Jarvis says.

They race over to the elevator, Jane stumbling a little without her socks on. He swipes his keycard and the door slides open. “I'll call you later,” he says, leaning forward to kiss her.

“How about _I_ call _you_?” she says, laying her hand on his chest.

He grins. “Okay, deal.”

“Thirty eighth floor.”

“Shit,” Bruce mutters, kissing her one last time. “Talk to you later.”

He runs back into the living room and looks around for anything out of place. Dishes! He collects up the plates and wine glasses and takes them to the kitchen. He puts them down on the counter and opens the dishwasher – which is full. Damnit. 

He empties out the dishes and searches for where they're supposed to go.

“Saucepans in the cupboard to your right,” Jarvis prompts.

“Thank you,” he says. He puts them all away and shoves the new dishes into the dishwasher.

“Sixtieth floor.”

He bashes a couple of buttons, turning the machine on. “Okay,” he says, smoothing his hair down. “Okay.”

He gets about two steps away before Jarvis pipes up again. “Sir, not to alarm you, but if Mr Stark sees two wine glasses in the dishwasher, he will ask questions. A lot of questions.”

Bruce growls under his breath a little, opening the machine up again and pulling them out. He takes them over to sink and quickly washes them out, drying them with the bottom of his shirt. He puts them away and blows hair from his face.

“They are now two floors away,” Jarvis informs him.

“Fuck,” he mutters, heading back towards the living room.

The elevator door opens on Tony and Pepper just as Bruce flops back down on the couch.

“...had it coming to him. I mean, he was being completely condescending to you!”

“I know many, less obvious, ways to ruin a man, Tony.”

“I am _sure_ you do...” They step into the room, and Tony looks up at Bruce. “Hey, Bruce... You're up and dressed kind of early.”

Bruce looks at his watch. Seven thirty. Huh. “Well, the early bird and all.”

Tony narrows his eyes. “Yeah... Dressed kind of fancy for this time of the morning.”

“Everything else is in the laundry.”

Tony nods slowly as Pepper rolls her eyes. “So, what happened with Betty?”

Bruce stands up, trying his best not to fidget. “We, uh, we talked. Got some stuff out in the open. It was... good.” 

“So... are the two of you gonna...” Tony bumps his fists together and Pepper sighs audibly, excusing herself to the kitchen.

“No, I don't think so.” Bruce shifts towards the elevator. “Look, I gotta... go get my laundry. Change into something more comfortable. I'll catch up with you guys later, okay?”

Tony arches an eyebrow as Bruce makes it over to the elevator. “Sure thing.”

“'kay, hope you had a good flight back!” Bruce calls, stepping into elevator.

“I'll get the real story out of you, you know,” Tony calls back his parting shot, as the door closes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally got this part finished! And I've finally decided that there are just two more chapters to go after this one. This fic has turned out to be more than just a loosely connected series of parts, but oh well.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christmas in July! Somehow I always end up writing Christmas fic in the summer. Most of this fic takes place in chapter eleven of [Destination](http://archiveofourown.org/works/772557/chapters/1570776). Basically, this chapter is shameless fluff. Next chapter, not so much.

“Jane?”

Jane stops brushing her teeth and leans around the bathroom door. Bruce is lying on his side in bed, squinting at her. “Yeah?”

“Are you going away for Christmas?”

She shakes her head. “I'm Jewish.”

“So you're going to be in New York over Christmas?”

“Yeah. My mom isn't even taking any time off work, so there's no point me going to visit.”

He yawns and arches his back a little. It's almost two am, and they were out until midnight, seeing a really hysterically bad movie. Most people hate seeing movies with her that have any kind of science involved, because she can't not pick it apart, but Bruce was right there with her, muttering under his breath and rolling his eyes. They got back to the tower just after midnight, and she's glad that the walls are soundproofed, because they got kind of loud.

“Okay,” he murmurs, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Why?”

He shrugs. “I don't know, Tony said he's going to be making a big deal out of Christmas this year. Are you still coming to the party in a couple of weeks?”

“And miss out on the event of the season? I'm coming. I might end up hiding in the bathroom or something, but I'll be in the building.”

Bruce grins. “Make sure there's room for me.”

“Tony's bathrooms are pretty spacious.”

“Mm.”

He's pushing them off topic, she knows, but she lets him because she isn't so sure that she wants to stay on topic. She finishes up doing her teeth, puts her red toothbrush next to Bruce's green one (all of his toiletries come to him green, apparently) in the cup and comes back into the bedroom. She snags her bra and underwear off the floor and puts them on before getting back into bed.

“Why d'you do that?” Bruce asks.

“What?”

“Put your bra back on when you get into bed.”

She shrugs. “It's not like there's anything for you to look at.”

He frowns at her. “Don't say that.”

“What? It's true. I've got the body of a twelve year old boy. No breasts, no hips, and skinny legs.”

Bruce presses his fingers to her hip, fingertips brushing over the waistband of her underwear. “I'm pretty sure this is a hipbone here,” he murmurs.

She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Mm. Well, at least you aren't getting love handles like I am.”

She smacks him on the shoulder. “You don't have _love handles_ ,” she says.

“Not yet. Lack of food and all the running I used to do kept me skinny, I guess.”

She tuts. “You know, not that I'm agreeing, but you could take up running, if you wanted to.”

“I only run if I'm being chased,” he says evenly.

She grins. “Well, I like your body the way it is,” she says before she can think about how awkward that sounds. Her cheeks warm, and she clears her throat.

“Same to you,” he murmurs, pressing his mouth to her shoulder for a moment. She doesn't respond straight away, and he glances up, eyebrows drawing together.

“Uh... thanks,” she says.

He smiles and leans over to kiss her cheek. “You wanna do something tomorrow? Maybe go to a museum or something?”

“Sure. Oh! What about ice skating? I love ice skating!”

He pulls a face. “Eh...”

“Good exercise, too.”

His face pulling increases. “Can we, uh, talk about it in the morning?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Sure...”

“Jarvis, lights,” Bruce says, and the room fades into darkness. Jane narrows her eyes in his direction for a moment before settling down with her back against his chest. He puts his arms around her, his nose brushing against her hair.

“This isn't over,” Jane says. She feels Bruce's breath on her neck as he laughs.

“I know.”

-

They sneak out of the tower in the late morning the next day to get breakfast, Jane subtly pushing them towards Central Park. They order pancakes at a diner nearby, and the whole place is done up with tinsel and fairy lights. Bruce looks thoughtful from beneath the baseball cap he's taken to wearing when they're out, as he heaps syrup onto his plate.

“We're going ice skating, aren't we?” he says.

“I don't know, are we?” she says, tugging the bottle out of his hand to layer on her own pancakes.

Bruce smiles a little. “How good are you at skating?”

“I'm pretty good, my dad used to take me skating all the time when I was a kid.”

“Okay... Well, I'm really bad at skating, so...”

“That's okay, I can teach you.”

Bruce looks at her dubiously. “I don't think you understand how bad I am at it.”

“Well, maybe I'm a really good teacher.” She isn't, but he doesn't need to know that right now.

At the rink, Bruce insists on paying for everything, even though he keeps casting nervous looks at the ice.

“Come on, it'll be fun,” Jane says, holding her hand out to him. He frowns at her, but takes her it anyway. She leads him out onto the ice and he clings onto the wall like it's the only thing between him and a thirty foot drop. She turns so that she's facing him, and holds out her other hand. “Come on,” she repeats.

“Why don't I just stay here for a little while?” he says, glancing at the people behind him.

She offers her hand a little harder. He huffs and very slowly lets go of the wall.

“Just slide one foot forward,” she says, taking his other hand.

“Okay, I-- shit!” He loses his balance, falling forward, and she only just manages to grab him by the waist, pulling him back against the side. “My hero,” he murmurs.

She pushes him back a bit and he pulls an embarrassed face at her. “You okay?”

“I don't have very good balance,” he says.

She smiles. “I noticed. Try to turn your feet out and bend your knees, that'll help you balance.”

He does as he's told, muttering vaguely under his breath, and manages to skate forward a few inches.

“There you go!” she says.

“On my way to figure skating,” he grumbles.

She laughs and kisses him quickly on the mouth. When she pulls back, he's kind of smiling. “Hold on to my hand and the wall and you'll be fine,” she says.

“What if I pull you over?”

She shrugs. “Then we'll fall over.”

They manage to skate for half an hour without any major spills, although it's clear that Bruce really is just _bad_ at this. It's kind of adorable. She keeps a tight grip of his hand until their palms are sweaty from the contact.

“Can we, uh, get off the ice for a few minutes?” Bruce asks. “My legs hurt.”

She smiles. “Sure.”

They get out of one of the gates and lean against the wall. 

“Having fun?” Bruce asks.

“Yeah, I love skating. Are you having fun?”

“I am. I don't normally like doing things I'm not good at, but...” He smiles slowly. “It's fun.”

She leans over and kisses his cheek. “You look kind of like Bambi on the ice.”

He arches an eyebrow at her. “Thanks.”

“It's cute!”

“Bambi Banner,” he mutters and chuckles.

She throws her arm around his shoulders. “Do you want to go get hot chocolate after this? Really make everything Christmassy?”

“Only if we can spike it with something. My nerves are shot to hell.”

“My mom used to do that. She'd yell at me if I tried to take a sip of her cocoa, I spent the first six years of my life thinking I was allergic to chocolate or something.”

Bruce laughs and crosses his arm over his chest to cover her hand resting on his shoulder. He leans into her, the brim of his baseball cap knocking against her forehead, and kisses her softly. “Come on,” he murmurs, “let's see if I can last the whole two hours without falling on my ass.”

-

He can't, and they both leave sporting bruises to their arms and legs. It makes for mutually uncomfortable sex, though they manage to figure it out.

“Yikes, that looks painful,” Darcy says as they sit down for coffee a few days later.

“Hm? Oh...” She looks down at the greenish bruise near her elbow and smiles. “Yeah, me and Bruce went ice skating.”

“Not any good at it, huh?”

“I'm great at ice skating; Bruce... isn't. Actually, he's really, really bad at it.”

Darcy grins. “Imagine the Hulk on skates.”

Jane drops her voice and leans in closer. “Hulk's probably better at it than Bruce.”

Darcy laughs and checks her phone with a quick flick of her eyes to where it's lying on the table. She's even more attentive to Steve than she used to be, after the whole Bucky situation. Jane didn't really get involved in the whole thing, but after the one time she met Sergeant Barnes, she was left feeling vaguely creeped and freaked out, and she could easily imagine the toll that must have taken on Steve, who seems, at times, kind of fragile. Darcy told her a while ago that he'd started going to counselling, and honestly Jane thinks that's where Bruce should be too, though she's not sure how well that would go down. She's not sure if their relationship is even one where she can make those sorts of pronouncements about his life.

Darcy taps at her phone and laughs again. “Steve's helping Tony decorate the tower,” she says, turning the phone towards Jane to show her the picture Steve has sent, of Tony standing with his back to the camera, tinsel wrapped all around him, Bruce's arm and a little of his face just visible at the edge. Steve's caption reads, 'I have to do all the tall person things'.

“Steve likes taking pictures of things,” Darcy says, “he sends me all sorts of stupid stuff.”

“That's nice,” Jane says. “Bruce sent me a joke a couple of days ago.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. What did one uranium 238 nucleus say to the other?”

Darcy blinks. “I do not know.”

“Gotta split!”

Darcy arches an eyebrow and nods.

“It's funny if you know what uranium 238 is.”

“As a representative of normal, non-scientist human beings, I'm telling you it's not.”

Jane rolls her eyes. “Well, me and Bruce thought it was funny.”

“No doubt,” Darcy says and looks at Jane for a long moment. “So, are you gonna buy a new dress for the party?”

Jane frowns. “Uh, I don't... think so? Why, should I?”

“I dunno, people use stuff like fancy parties as excuses to buy nice stuff for themselves?”

“I don't want to get another dress,” Jane says, “I have a dress.”

“ _A_ dress? Singular?”

“I have... more than that. I have at least two.”

“Uh huh,” Darcy murmurs, frowning at Jane a little.

“Oh, shut up,” Jane says. “What do I even need another dress for? I barely ever get the opportunity to wear them. It's a waste of money.”

Darcy spreads her hands. “Hey, I'm not demanding that you change your outlook on life or anything. Just making conversation.”

“Well... fine,” Jane says, taking a sip of her coffee.

“ _Fine_ ,” Darcy responds and, after a moment, grins.

-

She doesn't get a new dress, because that's just stupid, and it took her weeks of searching to find her purple dress, and another few weeks to talk herself into actually wearing such a fancy, strapless thing where other people could see her. She does, however, get a new pair of earrings, Christmas trees that flash red and yellow. She also dusts off an old pair of heels for the occasion, and spends an afternoon walking around her apartment in them, trying to get used to mangling her feet in such a way.

“I'm going to cripple myself,” she decides.

She takes a cab over to the tower, which is extravagant in itself for her, but she doesn't think she should probably get on the subway with all this dress. The driver looks at her with interest when she gives him the address, and she sits in the back wondering if going at all is such a good idea. There are going to be _celebrities_ there, cameras, rich people, superheroes! She'd honestly rather sit at home and write equations.

She takes her phone out of her tiny clutch bag, (which she personally thinks is a ridiculous item for anyone to own, but she guesses her shoulder bag wouldn't go with the dress) and texts Bruce to tell him that she's almost there.

 _OK_ , Bruce's message comes a minute later, _i'll meet you in the lobby._

There are a lot of photographers there when she gets out, and since she's kind of early, she's all they have to focus on. They yell at her about her dress and tell her to look over here or over there, and one guy just cuts through all the crap and shouts, 'who are you?' before she clears them and gets into the building. 

There's a ton of security in the lobby, but no Bruce. She frowns and pulls her phone out again.

_Are you down here?_

She watches her phone for a couple of minutes, but doesn't get a reply. She sighs and looks around, trying to figure out where she's supposed to go. The front doors open again and Darcy and Steve walk in, grinning at each other. 

She runs up to them. “This is so strange! Someone even took a picture of me!”

Darcy looks her up and down. “Of course they did, you look hot.” She turns to Steve and looks up at him. “Doesn't she look hot, Steve?”

Steve's cheeks pink. “You look very nice.”

Darcy smirks a little and Jane smiles. “Thank you. You look very nice too.”

“Hey, it's Santa's little helpers!” Tony's voice calls. Bruce is scurrying along behind him. “And... Santa, I guess?”

“Ho ho ho,” Steve mutters.

“Dump your coats and come up. Not many people have arrived yet,” Tony says, and starts to lead them back over to the elevators. So _that's_ where she was supposed to go.

Bruce shuffles over to stand next to her in the elevator as Darcy and Steve keep Tony occupied.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, “Tony collared me.”

“It's fine,” she whispers back.

He smiles and rubs his thumb over the material of her dress by her hip. “You look beautiful. Cool earrings, too.”

She feels herself flush at that. “Thank you,” she mutters.

Bruce smiles lopsidedly at her and looks like he's about to say something else, but the elevator door slides open before he gets the chance.

-

It's a pretty good party, great for people watching A-list celebrities and lots of good wine, but it's just a little too much. She's not a huge fan of parties, but she can normally have a pretty good time when she does go to one. This one, though, is just too overwhelming, and she's pretty sure she's not the only one feeling that way, when she runs into Steve in the kitchen. He looks a little hunted as he slips in and closes the door behind him. They bond over cake and awkwardness.

Tony keeps Bruce occupied for hours, introducing him to all sorts of people, which leaves Jane to just kind of float around, sampling a lot of the wine and nodding to people as they pass by. At least the last time she came to a party at Stark Tower there were a lot of scientists there, so she had some common ground to break the ice. She ends up talking to Hawkeye for a while, which is... interesting.

She's pathetically fiddling with her phone to look busy when Bruce makes a beeline for her.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” he asks.

“ _Yes_ ,” she says, and lets him hustle her towards a door.

They find an empty hallway to hide out in, and once they've made sure they're clear, Bruce leans in and kisses her.

“Hey,” he murmurs, nuzzling his nose against hers for a second.

She smiles. “Hey.”

“You wore the dress again.”

She shrugs. “Purple's a good colour on me.”

“It is,” he agrees, and drops his hands to her waist. “Do you want to, uh...” He looks shiftily towards a door across the hall.

“Go have sex in there?”

He looks back at her and raises his eyebrow.

-

The tower's bathrooms are as spacious as she'd thought they'd be, which means there's plenty of room for them to kiss and paw at each other. Her heels click against the tiled floor as she tugs him across the room, until they reach the sink. She leans back against it, pulling Bruce with her. Bruce hoists her up onto the edge of the sink, or tries to, at least; she gets up there through a joint effort and breathes a sigh of relief as she toes her shoes off. She's tossing those fucking things when she gets home.

Bruce undoes his fly and looks at her. “Uh, how are we going to... do this? I mean, logistically.”

She hikes her dress up and tugs down her underwear. “Just... come here.”

He rolls a condom on and comes over to her. “So...”

She slips down on the sink a little, just brushing the floor with her toes, and puts his hands on her hips, shifting forward to wrap her legs around his waist.

“You've done this before,” he murmurs.

She puts her hands on his shoulders and pulls him closer. “I've had a few bathroom encounters. Put your hands on my ass.”

He grins and places his hands on her ass, sliding into her with a grunt. She pulls herself up in his grip and kisses him as he begins to thrust.

They get kind of loud, she guesses, as he thrusts hard and fast and she clings onto his shoulders, panting and gasping. Someone knocks at the door and Bruce groans into her neck.

“Uh, excuse me...?” a voice calls.

Jane slides her fingers into Bruce's hair as his hips stutter against hers. “Occupied!” she calls back, scrunching up her toes as he hits _just right_.

“Oh... sorry...” the voice responds.

She clutches tighter at Bruce's hair as he huffs into her skin. “That was probably Brad Pitt,” she muses.

His laugh comes out high-pitched as he presses her harder into the cold edge of the sink, fingers sinking into her thighs. “I'm gonna...” he pants.

“Yeah,” she breathes, pushing her dress back enough to reach her clit. 

Bruce thumps his foot against the floor as he comes, sliding his hands up from her ass to her back, holding her up with just the force of his hips pressed to hers. She comes a second later, turning her face into his neck. They stay like that for a minute, panting equally as hard as the other, until he lets her down slowly, her feet hitting the cold floor.

“Good?” Bruce asks.

“Mmhm,” Jane murmurs, laying her hands on his chest.

“I didn't get... anything on your dress, did I?”

She looks down at her skirt and swishes it from side to side. “I think we're okay.”

“Okay,” he echoes, and tilts his head to the side to kiss her again, taking whatever's left of her lipstick. 

She wipes at his face and grins. “You're wearing more make up than I am right now.”

They don't bother going back to the party separately; Jarvis tells them the coast is clear, and Jane sucks it up and mashes her feet back into her heels. One day she's going to build a time machine for the sole purpose of going back to 2010 and smacking these shoes out of the hands of her past self in the shoe store. Even if meeting that past self creates a universe ending paradox, it'll be worth it.

“Do you want to dance?” Bruce asks, gesturing to the various dancing couples.

“Um... sure,” she says, glancing around. There's nothing very incriminating about dancing with a friend and, frankly, does she really care? She looks at him thoughtfully. _Does_ she care if people know? She wrinkles her nose. “Come on,” she says, reaching out her hand to him.

“Kiss, kiss, kiss!”someone suddenly yells. It's Tony, looking a little tipsy. Maybe people already know...?

Bruce looks up above their heads. “Mistletoe,” he murmurs.

She glances up. “Oh.”

Bruce pulls a face at her and huffs a quiet laugh. Jane pulls her shoulders back and looks him right in the eye. He winks at her and leans in, pressing his lips against hers chastely. She reaches up and squeezes his arm for a second before he pulls away.

“Damn, Bruce!” Tony says, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Bruce rolls his eyes and tips his head towards the other side of the room. “Let's go dance over there.”

“Sure,” she says, glancing back at Tony, who's already lost interest and wandered off to bother his Colonel friend.

-

Their attempts at dancing are a little better than when they were hammered on Tony's plane, but not by a wide margin. Bruce still spends a lot of time scrutinising his feet, and she still doesn't know exactly where to look. Although with heels on she can easily look over his shoulder and watch Darcy torturing Steve on the dance floor.

“I'm the same height as you with these shoes on,” she says.

“Because I'm short,” he says, one corner of his mouth tipping up.

She rubs her hand up his back. “Yeah.”

Bruce laughs and rests his chin on her shoulder. The music playing is pretty slow and romantic, so she guesses they've got an excuse for looking kind of overly familiar with each other. Also, Tony is having too much fun with Pepper and the Colonel to notice.

They sway on the spot for few minutes, not really saying a whole lot to each other. It doesn't seem like they need to.

“My feet really hurt,” she mutters eventually, when the music changes to something a little more upbeat.

Bruce clears his throat and leans back. “Do you wanna find somewhere to sit?”

“Yeah.”

He takes her hand. “C'mon.”

Jarvis directs them to an empty room that's out of the way enough that it's unlikely any wandering celebrities will stumble in there, and Jane collapses onto the nearest chair immediately.

“Ugh,” she mutters. Her back's not feeling so hot either, and she groans as she pushes herself forward to get her shoes off. Normally she can just slip them off, but her feet have swollen up so much that she's going to have to undo all the little straps.

“Hey, let me do that,” Bruce says, dropping down onto his knees in front of her. It's kind of a familiar sight and she can't help but laugh a little. Bruce doesn't seem to notice.

He tries to undo the straps with one hand, holding up the bottom of her dress with the other, but his fingers are too big and fingernails too stubby for that, so after a sigh of irritation, he just ducks underneath her skirt and lets it cover him as he works on the shoes. Jane laughs louder this time, and Bruce answers with a chuckle.

“Uh, Jarvis? You'll let us know if there's anyone coming this way, right?” she asks, looking down at Bruce's curved back, because wow, this is a hell of a compromising position for someone else to find them in.

“Of course, Dr Foster,” Jarvis replies.

“Your heels are bleeding,” Bruce murmurs from under her dress.

“I'm not surprised, I'm not much a heel wearer, and these are my worst pair.”

“They're kinda--” He puts the shoes aside and emerges from underneath her dress. “--torture devices.”

“Yeah...” she says, wiggling her toes, and grimacing at the shooting pains it causes. Bruce grimaces in sympathy and reaches out to wrap his hand around her foot. “What are you doing?” she asks.

He presses his thumb into the sole of her foot and smiles. “I'm good at this, don't worry.”

“I'm not wor-- mm...” Oh, he really _is_ good at this. Bruce chuckles and digs his thumb in harder, and she can't help a little gasp of pleasure. He works on one foot for a couple of minutes, then switches to the other, and Jane sighs even deeper, leaning back into the chair.

“You sound more satisfied now than when we were having sex...”

“This is better than sex,” she murmurs, eyes closed.

“Dr Foster, Captain Rogers, Ms Lewis, and Mr Barton are heading this way.”

She sighs unhappily as Bruce drops her foot, and opens her eyes.

“Uh...” Bruce says, looking around as she begins to make out voices, Darcy's the loudest, unsurprisingly. Their footsteps get louder and louder until she's pretty sure they're right outside the door. Bruce frowns for a second, then scoots over to lean against the bottom of her chair, right as Darcy, Steve, and Clint wander in.

“There was a lot of bullshit happening back there,” Clint says, throwing himself onto the couch opposite Jane and Bruce.

“Yep,” Darcy says, kicking her shoes off and heading towards Jane with the clear intention to sit on the chair with her. Jane rolls her eyes and scoots over as Darcy lands on the chair cushion, Steve at her heels. Jane lets her hand drop to Bruce's neck, running her fingers over the short hair there. Bruce shivers. Darcy gives her a significant look, but before Jane can elbow her, Steve leans over to immediately captures Darcy's attention, letting Jane off the hook.

-

Jane has to admit, she's surprised by the turn of events at the end of evening. Bruce isn't, but maybe that's because he nodded off against her leg when Tony took off after Pepper and finally proposed, and when he woke up, he was too foggy to register all the sudden squealing and celebration.

She was surprised again when Bruce came back from following Steve and Darcy out into hallway, and murmured that Sergeant Barnes had turned up and that he was out there, acting like a normal human being. Jane wondered how that would work out, but when Tony yelled for everyone to come back in, Steve seemed in high enough spirits.

By two am, Bruce has been yawning almost continually for half an hour. Jane bumps him with her shoulder and he pulls his gaze away from where Tony is attempting to lead Pepper in a waltz to look at her.

“I don't think anyone would miss us if we slipped out,” she says. Steve and Darcy bailed an hour ago, and she's pretty sure Colonel Rhodes has only stuck around out of loyalty to Tony. Barton up and disappeared about half an hour ago, and it took ten minutes before she realised he'd gone.

“Mm, c'mon,” Bruce murmurs, taking her hand as they slip out, completely unnoticed, both barefoot and carrying their shoes in their hands.

In his bedroom, Bruce helps Jane unzip her dress, which was absolute hell to do up hours earlier – she ended up bent double, with her head by her knees, tugging the zipper downwards. She's not entirely sure what she's going to do tomorrow, because she doesn't think wearing a full length evening gown on a morning train into Hell's Kitchen is probably the best idea ever. She decides not to worry about it right at that moment, though, and takes the t-shirt and boxers that Bruce offers her.

Bruce insists on cleaning up her feet before she does her teeth, pulling out cotton wool pads, disinfectant, bandaids, and Aloe Vera gel.

“You just happened to have all of these things in your bedroom?” she asks, stretching out her foot as Bruce begins to wipe disinfectant over the cuts and blisters. It stings a little, but it's not too bad.

He shrugs. “Just a habit, I guess. Spend enough time playing medical doctor, I guess you start to think about all the things you should keep for emergencies.”

“All I've got at home are bandaids,” Jane says.

Bruce smooths a little gel over the blisters on her right foot and reaches for his own bandaids. “I'll buy you a first aid kit for Christmas,” he says.

She washes off what's left of her make up and does her teeth standing beside Bruce at his bathroom sink. They don't talk much as they take turns at the faucet, and then at Bruce's mouthwash. Jane gets there first and then steps aside to put on moisturiser from a tube she left in his bathroom weeks ago.

He gargles and spits into the sink, and something comes out along with the mouth wash, clicking against the granite. Jane leans forward and frowns.

“What's that?”

“Uh...” He squints at it. “Nothing.” He moves to wash it down the drain, and she reaches out to stop him.

“Is that a filling?”

“Uh... no.”

She looks at it closer. “It looks like a filling.”

“It's...” He scratches behind his ear. “It's not _technically_ a filling. It's... one of those temporary ones from the drug store.”

She looks up at him. “How long's it been in your mouth for?”

“Mm...” He starts fiddling with his ear, which is pretty much a dead give away that he's holding something back. “Couple of months?”

She tuts. “You've had the cavity for a couple of months?”

“Not exactly...” He taps his fingernails against the counter top. “More like... five years?”

“Bruce!”

He shrugs. “I keep it covered with the temporary stuff – sometimes I had to make my own, depending on where I was – and I keep my teeth as clean as I can, but...” He shrugs. “I didn't have access to dentists, or the money to pay them with, for a long time, and whenever I did, it didn't seem like a top priority.”

“Well, it's a top priority now, Bruce, come on. That could get really nasty if you don't deal with it, you should know that better than most.”

“I know...” he mutters. “I don't like dentists...”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “You're forty two.”

“Having metal instruments stuck in your mouth is scary at any age,” he counters.

She rolls her eyes. “Bruce, promise me you'll go to the dentist.”

He rakes his fingers through his hair and sighs. “Fine.”

“Good.” She leans up and kisses him quickly. “Okay, put another one of those temporary things in, then come to bed. It's late. And _call a dentist_ tomorrow.”

He wraps his arm around her shoulders and gives her a quick hug. “Okay, bossy.”

“You're only calling me 'bossy' because you know I'm right.”

“Mm,” he hums, smiling at her as she leaves the bathroom.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I say this every time, but this got a lot longer than I expected it to...

He might have misrepresented the truth about his teeth to Jane, just a little, which comes to light when he eventually goes to Tony's dentist, a couple of days after Christmas – his teeth are actually pretty busted from years on the run. He doesn't just have one cavity, he has several, and it's probably only by virtue of Hulk's residual healing factor that he hasn't had any major infections.

It's also at the dentist that he finds out that Stark Industries has the best health benefits of any company currently operating in the US, and all of his dental work – which turns out to be two fillings, a tooth extraction, and a root canal – is fully covered. And he can do it right then, so Tony waits four hours in the waiting room while the dentist drills and injects and pulls things out of Bruce's mouth, keeping up a constant supply of anaesthetic and painkillers, because Bruce has most of the bad side effects of the super soldier serum, with very few of the benefits. He's completely out of it on the drive home – Tony tells him later that if he'd filmed their conversation and put it up on youtube it would have got more hits than that 'is this real life' kid. Whatever that means.

The first thing Steve says when he sees Bruce the next day is, 'you look like a chipmunk' followed by, 'sorry'.

The whole thing makes him pretty miserable, and even five days later, his face is still a little swollen. He's stuck eating a lot of cereal and soup.

He's in his lab, holding an icepack to his face, trying to actually earn that health insurance, when the floor starts shaking. He didn't take _that_ many of Pepper's magical painkillers... He looks over at the window just as something that doesn't look, to him, entirely human flies past.

“What the fuck?” he mutters, getting up and going over to the window. It's absolute chaos outside, cars crashed in store fronts, people running in all different directions, cops ineffectually trying to calm the situation. “Jarvis, what's going on?”

“That is currently unclear, sir. Mr Stark and Captain Rogers are in the ninetieth floor living area attempting to work that out.”

“Thanks,” he says, heading towards the elevator. Steve came by earlier to help Tony out with something, but Bruce hasn't been up to see him yet. Convenient time for him to be over, really.

He takes the elevator up to the ninetieth floor and finds both Tony and Steve pacing the floor on their phones.

“Just stay in Geneva, okay, Pepper? Don't get on any planes right now.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.'s gotta have a bunker somewhere. C'mon, Darce, it's not your job to be in the line of fire... No, I'm not saying that-- I just gotta know you're gonna be safe...”

Bruce pats down his pockets and finds them empty. Damnit, he left his cell phone on his desk in the bedroom – he can _see_ it lying there. He turns around to head back to the elevator – Jane's probably at home and this seems localised, but he'd like to know for sure that she's okay – when Tony says, 'Thor!' and Steve says, 'shit'.

Bruce turns back around slowly and finds Thor on the balcony, waving at them, Tony rushing over to meet him, and Steve looking at Bruce with worry.

“Thor!” Tony repeats, sliding the door open. “Long time no see.”

“I only wish it were under better circumstances,” Thor says, smiling widely.

“So, those critters running around Manhattan are yours?”

Thor tips his head to one side. “In a manner.”

“Well, Foster's going shit a brick when she sees you.”

“Tony!” Steve snaps, glancing over at Bruce again.

“What, she will!”

“I take it that's a good reaction,” Thor intones, voice sounding every inch the god he is. Water from Bruce's icepack is dripping down his arm and soaking his sleeve.

“In this case, yeah.”

“And you know my Jane?”

 _His_ Jane.

Tony grins and backs up to let Thor into the room. “Oh yeah, we science together. Well, mostly Bruce and Jane science together, but I pay for it.”

Thor smiles widely again and looks over at Bruce. “Dr Banner, are you injured?”

Bruce blinks and Steve murmurs, 'the icepack'. He blinks again. “Root canal.”

Thor's brow furrows. “I don't know what that is.”

“Teeth... stuff,” he mutters.

“Ah. Well, I hope you feel better soon.”

“Thanks...”

Steve clears his throat. “Okay, Thor, why don't you fill us in on what exactly is going on outside?”

-

They assemble outside the tower in the gardens, with plenty of room for Bruce to Hulk out. Which is something he's _definitely_ going to be doing – the only question is how long he can put it off. Thor is babbling about Jane and there's anxiety and anger bubbling inside Bruce that's going to make for a _very bad_ combination.

“Bruce,” Steve says, quiet and commanding. He's in full costume, shield in hand, cowl pulled down. This is Captain America, not Steve Rogers.

Bruce flicks his eyes to him. “Yeah.”

Steve looks back at where Tony, Clint, and Thor (Natasha still AWOL with Bucky) are talking. “I know this is difficult, okay, and we'll deal with it, but I need Hulk, and _you_ , to keep your head on straight while this is going on.”

“Sure,” Bruce says flatly.

“ _Bruce_ ,” Steve repeats, “I mean it. Hulk's probably going to be the one to do the most damage to these... aliens.” Thor explained what exactly these things were, but honestly Bruce wasn't paying any attention. “Is he going to be able to control himself with Thor?”

Bruce shrugs. “Hulk's not known for his control.”

“Guys!” Tony yells, and Steve turns around to look at him. “You good, because we need to get going.”

“One minute,” Steve says, and looks back at Bruce. “Just try your best, okay?”

“Can I Hulk out now?”

Steve nods, and Bruce feels Hulk rumble in his chest, aching to be let loose for the first time in months. Despite Steve's attempts to control the situation, Bruce knows this isn't going to be pretty.

-

He doesn't remember much about what happened, afterwards. He never does, which is one of the only courtesies that Hulk affords him. What comes to him are snippets of the day, Hulk's intense hatred of Thor (which was present even before Jane, go figure) – his strongest recollection is of growling at Thor. Clint jokes that Hulk has a toothache, and Thor says, very magnanimously, 'you are not yourself, Dr Banner, so I won't hold it against you'.

Bruce comes back to himself in the late afternoon, covered in some kind of foul smelling liquid that necessitates scrubbing himself down in a decontamination unit at one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s many bases around the city, which would strike him as terribly undignified if he didn't already have the life that he does.

When he gets back out, dressed in the sweatpants and loose t-shirt that an agent shoved at him, Tony is back on his phone with Pepper, and Darcy is checking Steve over between kisses. Thor looks a little confused. Bruce is roundly ignored by everyone, which is just fine by him; he needs to find a phone and see if Jane's okay.

He's not the only one, apparently.

“Dr Foster is fine, sir,” an agent tells Thor. “She's safe at home.”

Thor smiles. “I shall go to her presently.”

Bruce sighs and looks away. Goddamnit, he couldn't even find out if Jane was okay before Thor. God _damn_ it. He takes a shaky breath and turns towards the exit.

“Hey, Bruce? Bruce?” Steve jogs up to him, Darcy close behind. “Are you...?”

“I'm going home,” he mutters.

“Shouldn't you be checked over by a doctor first?”

“No,” he says, taking another step towards the door.

“Bruce...” Steve says, reaching out and touching his arm. 

Bruce jerks away. “I'm _going home_ ,” he repeats.

An agent drives him back to the tower, through the debris of the fight, and he heads straight for the lab, locking himself in. His legs started getting stiff on the drive home, and by the time he gets to the lab and locks the door, his hip is seizing up and he can barely walk.

He stumbles over to the cabinet by his desk and pulls out a bottle and a syringe.

“Sir...” Jarvis says, sounding concerned. At least the artificial intelligence gives a shit about him.

He presses the needle through the rubber seal and pulls back the stopper. “Don't worry, Jarvis, it's just cortisone.”

“If you say so...” Jarvis says.

Bruce sighs and injects the cortisone into his hip. It stings but he feels his muscles loosen up enough to at least get over to the kitchenette and grab a Gatorade and an energy bar. Steve says these are the best ones, and he's pretty much tried them all. 

He stumbles back over to the desk and gets bottles of Tylenol and Advil out of the drawer. They're sitting on top of a box and envelope, 'Jane' scrawled across the blue paper in his usual chicken scratch. He spent weeks figuring out just the right card and present to get her for her birthday, which just so happens to be _tomorrow_. Thor came back at exactly the right time. He grabs the bottles, slams the drawer shut, and washes down the doses with some of the Gatorade – god, Jane is right, this stuff is disgusting. He limps over to the couch and collapses on it.

“Jarvis, can you turn the TV on?”

“Yes, sir.”

The wall mounted TV switches on to a news channel, which of course is wall to wall Avengers coverage, but he doesn't bother to change it, because what the hell else is he going to find to watch? Probably everything's going to be bumped for the news when there are aliens overrunning Manhattan _again_.

“ _...Hulk, alter ego of scientist Bruce Banner, took centre stage in today's events in downtown Mahattan, taking on several creatures, the origin of which have yet to be identified..._ ”

Bruce watches the footage of Hulk leaping from the top of a building onto some... thing, only to be side swiped by another thing, sending him crashing into the side of a second building. Bruce grimaces and pulls up his t-shirt to look at his side – so _that's_ where that bruise came from.

“Ugh,” he groans. “I'm too old for this.”

“Sir, would you like me to call someone for you?”

He leans his head back against the couch cushion and sighs. “No, I'm just going to sit here and be miserable on my own.”

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis says. “I am here if you need me.”

Bruce snorts. “Thanks, Jarvis.”

-

He wakes up to knocking. He lifts his head slowly and squints at the door, even though he's got his glasses on.

“How long've I been asleep?” he mumbles.

“Seventeen minutes, twenty three seconds, sir.”

Bruce groans and rubs at his face.

“Shall I open the door, sir?”

“Don't want to see anyone,” he mumbles.

“It is Dr Foster, sir.”

“Oh...” He takes a deep breath and pushes himself up. “Uh, yeah, unlock the door.”

He struggles up as the lock clicks open and Jane comes in. “Are you okay?” she asks. “God, you look terrible, sit down.”

“Uh, thanks,” he murmurs, sliding back down to the couch. Jane doesn't seem to be in a joking mood, though, as she pulls off her coat and tosses it over a chair before rushing over to him. She's wearing a hoodie of his that he forgot in her apartment a couple of weeks ago. He stares at it as she talks with her hands.

“I came over as soon as they said the attack was over on the news. I called you about ten times, why aren't you answering your phone?”

His breath catches; if she left right after everything was over, she hasn't seen Thor yet. Oh, God, is that good or bad?

“Bruce,” she repeats, reaching out to grab his hand.

He blinks hard. He didn't answer her question. “Um, uh... my phone's in my room. Sorry.”

She presses her other hand to his face, seeming to feel around for something. “You're supposed to keep your cell phone with you, that's the point of it,” she says, and finishes probing his face, apparently satisfied that he didn't break his jaw or something.

“Sorry,” he repeats.

“Are you okay? Hulk really took a beating out there.”

“He can handle it.”

She frowns and closes her other hand around the back of his neck. “Can you?”

He shrugs. The corners of Jane's mouth turn down and she pulls him to her, kissing him gently. “I was really scared,” she murmurs against his mouth, before kissing him again, deeper. He curls his fingers around her waist and returns the kiss.

She must realise that Thor's back; if she's been watching the news, there's no way she could have missed it. Does he have to tell her? Does he have to...

“Jane,” he mutters, pulling his mouth away from hers. “Jane, Thor's back.”

She slides her fingers into his hair, tugging lightly. God, he likes that. “I know.” She drops her other hand from his neck to his back, pressing her fingertips in near his spine, and he shivers, leaning forward to kiss her again.

She crawls closer, her sharp knees pressing into his bruised leg, and opens her mouth under his. He runs his hands down her sides, settling at her hips, feeling his frayed nerves being soothed by her soft touches. He needs this. And he needs this to be real.

He finds it in himself to pull away one more time, opening his mouth to ask... something. He runs through a dozen half formed thoughts in his head as Jane starts to frown at him, but settles on the most cowardly one. “Thor's back,” he repeats, studying her face.

She reaches out and slides both hands into his hair, pulling him back in. “I know,” she says.

Fuck it. He pulls her into his lap, her legs folding awkwardly around his waist, and his glasses bump into the bridge of her nose as things get a little more heated. She tugs them off his face without breaking the kiss, and he hears them hit the floor with a clatter. He pulls her even closer, until their fronts are completely pressed together, and he's not sure that he's up to anything more strenuous than this right now, but he's definitely going to try. His face hurts and his side hurts and his hip hurts, but hell, he doesn't give a _fuck_ right now.

“Sir...” Jarvis starts, and Bruce groans, half from frustration and half from the way Jane is biting at his lip.

“Jarvis, mute,” he manages, barely breaking the kiss. 

There's a steady rushing in his ears that's obliterating everything that isn't involved with his hands and his mouth. Jane pushes her hand up his t-shirt, pressing her fingers against his spine again, making him whimper.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he is aware of what is going on around them. He's aware of distant voices, he's aware of the soft slide of the door opening, he's aware of Jarvis's voice floating in from the corridor (“Sir, sir, your attention is needed--”), he's aware of Tony's, 'what the f...?'. It just doesn't absorb into his brain all at the same time, not with Jane's fingers are buried in his hair the way they are.

Jane notices first, and her fingers fall away from his hair, her mouth pulling away from his, and he groans, several warring thoughts colliding together, like: 'why are we stopping?', and 'I think I'm in l--', and 'Tony just walked in'.

Tony _just walked in_.

He looks up and around at the door, and sees a blurry flash of blond and red disappear around the corner, leaving Tony standing there alone.

“Okay, hey, I, uh... Um... I'm gonna...” Tony crosses his arms over his chest and nods once. “Okay, wow,” he finishes and walks away, the door sliding closed again.

“Was that...” Bruce wipes his hand across his mouth. “Was Thor with Tony?”

“Yeah...” Jane says in a very tiny voice, looking at him with big eyes. “I should... uh, I should... go after him?”

“Uh...”

“I... I should,” she decides, and scoots out of his lap. She swings her legs to the floor and stands up, stepping on something that crunches. Her eyes widen even further. “Oh fuck,” she mutters, lifting her foot. “Those were your... I stepped on your glasses...” She picks them up, holding out the mangled glasses. “I am so sorry, Bruce.”

He takes them from her. “They're only reading glasses,” he mutters. “Five bucks from a drug store.”

She looks at him for a moment, brow furrowed. “Uh...”

“Just go see if Thor's okay,” he says, and forces a thin smile.

“Okay,” she murmurs, standing up. “I'll, um, I'll see you later?” She doesn't sound so sure about it, though.

He nods. “Uh huh.”

“Okay,” she repeats, looking at him one more time before leaving the room.

He stares at the door as it slides shut again, and tries to swallow down his rising anxiety again. He's not very successful.

The door slides open again, and he says, “Jane?” even as he registers that the blurry figure in the doorway is definitely not shaped like Jane.

“Sorry,” Tony says, walking in. “Just passed her in the hallway.”

Bruce nods. Tony walks further into the room; talking to Tony is just about the last thing in the world that Bruce wants right now.

“So...” Tony says, clasping his hands behind his back and raising his eyebrows.

“I really don't want to talk to... to anyone right now,” Bruce mutters.

That doesn't stop Tony from grabbing a chair and dragging to over to the couch to sit down. “Come on, don't I deserve some kind of explanation? I was definitely _not_ expecting to find that when Thor suggested that we check you were okay.”

Bruce winces. Thor was worried about him? God, Bruce is fucking cockroach.

“So, did that kiss at the Christmas party awaken the fires of passion in you two?” Tony asks.

Bruce shakes his head. “We were already...”

“Seriously? For how long?”

“Since... February.”

Tony blinks slowly. “February? Like February eleven months ago February? Did you two even know each other in February?”

Bruce picks at the bottom of his t-shirt for a moment, as Tony puts it together. His eyes widen. “Darcy and Steve's wedding? You hooked up with the bridesmaid? _Where?_ Did you two screw in my _workshop?_ ”

Bruce shakes his head. “Plane.”

“Plane?” Tony narrows his eyes. “When you two... Well, I guess that makes sense.”

“You really didn't know?” Bruce asks, running his fingers through his hair. Anything to move the conversation away from Thor for a minute. Jane and Thor and whatever they're doing right now... “We weren't exactly subtle.”

“I didn't,” Tony says, sounding shocked and a little disappointed in himself. “Is this like an 'everyone except me knew' situation?”

“No, only... Darcy and Steve.”

“Those _rats_ ,” Tony mutters, clicking his fingers.

“And... Jane's mother. I talked to her on the phone once.” He scratches at his stubble. “And Betty. And Jarvis.”

“Uh _huh_ ,” Tony says, eyeing him carefully. Bruce hunches his shoulders a little. “You know, I really should have guessed something was going on with you two last week when I drove you home from the dentist.”

Bruce snaps his head up. “Why? What did I say?”

“Oh, nothing _too_ incriminating, you just kept going on about what a great friend Jane was. You got pretty irritated that I didn't understand the gravity of what you were saying. I thought you were just at the 'I love everyone' part of the gas and air high.”

“Oh,” Bruce says, looking down at his hands. 

“So, you slept with someone after a wedding, not unheard of. And now, almost a year later, I find you two making out after you've been in one hell of a fight against gross alien things. So, uh, what's up with that?”

Bruce shrugs, and picks at his fingernails. “I, uh... I guess it was just...” He grimaces. “Sex. At first. I mean, I hadn't had sex in seven years...”

Tony whistles. Bruce gives him a look and he makes a zipping motion, drawing his pinched fingers across his mouth.

“But then...” Bruce continues, trying to find the right words. “It was nice... having a friend.”

“I'm not your friend?” Tony says, sitting up straighter. “I think I'm a pretty damn good friend, myself. Just 'cause I don't have _breasts_ and a _PhD_...”

Bruce narrows his eyes. “It's not like that.”

“So, what's it like?”

“It's...” He sighs and runs his fingers through his hair again. Jesus, what he must look like right now – worn out, sick, hair everywhere. What a fucking catch. “It's that I guess we were both lonely... and lost, and it was nice to spend time with someone who... understood that. It was nice to get a little... physical affection.”

Tony nods slowly. “You feel lost now?”

Bruce breathes out heavily. Does he? After Manhattan, he should have felt better about himself, and he did, at first, but he left after the battle was over, and the taste of friends, of _a life_ , that he'd got just made him feel worse, more adrift. Then Ross came after him with Blonsky again, an even more monstrous version of himself, and Bruce landed back, in the end, in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, one of the last places he wanted to be.

But now...?

Tony's still looking at him, head tilted. Bruce shakes his head. “No, not any more. Well, not until today, at least...”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean...” He shrugs helplessly. “I-I... it's over now, isn't it? Thor's back and... and that's what everyone's been waiting for, right? Including me.”

Tony frowns. “Really? I mean, she must have known that Thor was... back, right?” At Bruce's nod, he continues, still frowning. “And Thor flew over to her apartment and she was already gone when he got there, and she comes right over here, to see you, and you two engage in some serious sex kissing, which all leads me to believe that _you_ were the person she wanted to see.”

Bruce shakes his head and shrugs.

“Why are you so set against things being okay for you?”

Bruce shakes his head again. “Because... I never get the things I want. Nothing _ever_ works out for me. I-I--” He shakes his head and clenches his fists.

“Well, I don't know about that...” Tony murmurs.

“No,” Bruce snaps, a little too sharply. “ _No_. I know you're trying to make me feel better, but you don't get it. Literally every single thing in my life has fucked me over. I was born to a man whose most deeply held desire was that I'd died in my sleep as a baby, and as every person in the whole _fucking_ world knows now, he abused me and killed my mother, and then I got stuck in a group home, and then I lived with an aunt who didn't want me. And then I met a girl and I fell in love with her, and her father hated me from the very beginning. And then I became a-- a-- monster, _because of that man_ , and he tried to kill me, and I spent seven years alone, living hand to mouth. And then I get a home again, and I meet someone I really like, and she's hung up on a literal _god_ , and I'm a _mess_.” He takes a ragged breath. “I had to inject myself today with fucking steroids just so that I could walk, and I've put on weight, and I'm going blind, and I don't even have all of my own _goddamn fucking_ teeth any more!” He slaps his open palm against his leg, the sharp sound loud in the sudden silence.

Tony raises his eyebrows. “Oh... kay...” he murmurs.

Bruce laughs, high-pitched and ugly. “Don't worry, I'm not gonna Hulk out, I'm too fucking tired.”

“I can tell. You look like a raccoon.”

Bruce makes another high-pitched, weird noise, and roughly rubs at his face, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes and leaving them there for a minute.

“Bruce...” Tony says slowly, “are you okay?”

Bruce drops his hands. “I think that would be a resounding _no_.”

“That's what I thought,” Tony says. “You aren't going to do anything stupid, are you?”

“I'm not going to try to kill myself, if that's what you mean.”

Tony nods. “Why don't you get some sleep?” At Bruce's shaking head, Tony rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest. “You can sleep on the couch, and I will stay in here, and I will wake you up if anything happens, but if you _don't_ go to sleep, I'll get S.H.I.E.L.D. to sedate you until you no longer look like an extra on _The Walking Dead_.”

Tony looks at Bruce steadily, unconcerned by Bruce's scowl. Bruce shrugs. “Fine. I'll try.”

“I'll get you a blanket and pillow.”

Tony gets up and goes to a closet that holds all sorts of essentials for sleeping in the lab (“All my labs have them,” he told Bruce months ago.), while Bruce silently fumes on the couch. If he hadn't already Hulked out today, he'd be getting in touch with his green inner child right about now.

“Here you go,” Tony says, tossing them to him. Bruce grunts and shoves the pillow against the armrest, shakes out the blanket, then scoots around to lie lengthwise on the couch. His glasses press against his leg and he digs under the blanket for a moment and pulls them out, dropping them on the floor. Tony peers at them. 

“What happened to your glasses?”

“Jane stepped on them,” he mutters, shifting around to get comfortable.

“I bet you think that's symbolic,” Tony says sardonically, bending down to retrieve them.

Bruce grunts again. As agitated as he was a couple of minutes ago, when his head hits the pillow, his eyelids immediately start to get heavy. He hears Tony walk a little distance, and then the metallic clang of his glasses hitting the side of the trash can. He sighs, whatever train of thought he was having slipping away from him.

“You know,” Tony says, and his voice sounds muffled and indistinct, “it's only a back molar, it's not like anyone can tell...”

-

Jane walks around the whole floor before Jarvis informs her that Thor has 'left the building'.

“He's not the king yet,” she mutters, kind of pleased at her joke. Funny isn't something she's normally good at. She frowns. “At least, I don't think so.”

Jarvis doesn't respond. Oh well.

“Any idea where he went?”

“I am afraid not, Dr Foster.”

She sighs and looks back towards Bruce's lab. Should she...? She honestly doesn't know what kind of conversation they're going to have if she goes back in there.

“Mr Stark is currently with Dr Banner,” Jarvis says, “if you felt you needed to be alone.”

She smiles. Tony programmed this computer well. “Thanks, Jarvis.” 

“Not a problem, Dr Foster.”

She takes the elevator up to Tony's main living area. She's not totally sure if she's allowed to go up there unattended, but the elevator takes her there, and she assumes Jarvis could have stopped it if she wasn't allowed. She makes a beeline for Tony's bar and picks up the bottle that's already out. Whiskey – she grimaces.

“Do you think it'd be okay if I had some of this?” she asks.

“I think it would be permissible, Dr Foster.”

She nods, and pours out a tiny bit into a glass. She downs it in one swallow, because she's really a wine and certain flavoured tequilas sort of woman – she definitely doesn't normally choose to drink battery acid out of a glass, but she isn't drinking it for the taste. She coughs and gags a little, then pours herself a second shot.

“This is a mess,” she mutters, and washes the glass out in the little sink. She glances up at the ceiling. “Jarvis, how's Bruce?”

“Dr Banner is... not in an especially good mood,” Jarvis says.

Jane sighs. “I'm not surprised.”

Jarvis stays silent. She sighs again and pulls her phone out of her pocket. Maybe Darcy will have some words of wisdom for her. Or something sarcastic and a little bit mean that would annoy the hell out of Jane and stop her thinking about all her problems for a while.

But Darcy doesn't give her either, because she doesn't answer her phone, which Jane guesses is understandable, considering the circumstances. She sits down on the stool at Tony's bar and rests her head in her hands. What a fucking _mess_.

A little while later, the floor shudders under her feet, setting the glasses on the bar shaking, vibrations running through her arms. Oh Jesus, are the aliens back? She doesn't think Bruce could go another round with them. It's just one shudder, though, and then it passes. She looks up and frowns.

“Dr Foster,” Jarvis says. “The deck.”

She turns around to the huge sliding doors that lead out onto the deck. It takes a moment for her to make anything out, because it's getting dark and rain is coming down in sheets, but then she sees something fluttering in the wind. Something red.

“Fuck,” she mutters. She looks back at the bottle of whiskey, then at the doors again, and takes a breath.

She walks over to the doors, zipping up her hoodie as she goes. Bruce has been wearing it a lot this winter, and it's all soft and broken in around the elbows. The doors open automatically as she approaches them, and she takes one more moment to compose herself before stepping out there, tugging her hood up.

“Thor?” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. The rain comes down hard on her head, the wind whipping her hair across her face.

He doesn't reply. She walks up to the railing and stands beside him. “I'm, uh, I'm sorry that you saw that...”

“I do not doubt that,” he says.

She wrinkles her nose. “Okay...”

Thor lifts his chin and continues to look out over the city.

“So... do you want to talk, or should I just go?”

Thor still doesn't reply and Jane sighs, stepping away from the railing. She tried.

“I went to your building to see you,” Thor says.

She stops and looks at the back of his head. “Oh?”

“You had already left when I arrived.” He turns to her, an accusing look in his eye.

“Well, now you know what it feels like,” she says, the words just slipping out.

Thor's eyes narrow. “You did this to spite me?”

She bristles. “Excuse me?”

“You must have been aware that I would be looking for you.”

“Well, not from past experience,” she says.

Thor's cheek twitches, and again, he doesn't reply. She shakes her head and shrugs. “I don't know why I even bothered coming out here,” she says, and turns back to the door. She can hear Thor's cape swish in the wind and that's all. He doesn't say anything, isn't trying to engage with her in any way, and goddamnit she _hates_ when people do that. She's not the unreasonable one here.

She swings back around. “Actually, no. I resent you trying to make me feel bad about this. It's not like I cheated on you; you didn't even come back _for a year_.”

“I had no way to get to back to you, Jane,” he says, voice softening. “I had to destroy the bridge to stop Loki.”

She refrains from mentioning that that clearly didn't work – if she starts thinking about what happened to Erik, she'll really lose the plot. “And that's what I told myself. I told myself that there was a reason, that for some noble reason I didn't understand you had to stay away, and that just about worked for me for a year. And then... you _did_ come back, and you got S.H.I.E.L.D. to send me away? And by the time I found out you'd come back to Earth, you'd already left it again. So what was I supposed to do? Keep being an idiot?”

“It was... it was necessary, Jane,” he says. “I couldn't see harm come to you, and I needed to remove Loki as soon as possible.”

“And while you were doing that, I still had a life to live. That first year, I worked so hard to try to get you back, to get _to_ you, I didn't do anything else. And then the second year, I just didn't know what to do. I was stuck. Puente Antiguo basically torpedoed my career because S.H.I.E.L.D. buried me in confidentiality clauses, but that was okay at first. I wasn't looking to publish anything. After that, I was basically unemployable anywhere except S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I'm sorry, Jane, that wasn't my intention,” Thor says softly.

She shrugs. “I didn't think it was. But it still happened. It's only been this past year that I've finally started to get things back together again. So don't act like I've done something to _you_.”

He nods slowly, fixing her with a thoughtful gaze. “Had I known the sorrow I caused you... Jane, I will do whatever I have to to make it up to you. You could return to Asgard with me. I would look after you, you could be my queen.”

“I don't want to be looked after,” she snaps. The thought of seeing another planet, let alone another _galaxy_ , is an incredible thought, but... “I'm not a 'queen'. I'm not _your_ queen. I'm a scientist. I spent eight years studying to be a scientist, and maybe that doesn't seem like a long time to you, but it _is_ a long time.”

“There is science on Asgard,” he says, “and everything you need would be available to you.”

“And then what?”

He tips his head to one side. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you're immortal—”

“I'm not.”

“You're not?”

He shakes his head. “No, Aesir lifespans are just... much longer than those of Midgardians.”

She rolls her eyes. “So, basically you're immortal. And I'm not. So, I'll die in the blink of an eye to you, away from everyone I know?”

“The Rainbow Bridge has been restored,” he says, “you could travel back and forth at will.”

“And if something happens to it again? It's... too much of a risk, and frankly, I don't want to. I'm just... I'm done, Thor.”

He nods. “And if I had returned to you two years ago, would things be different?”

“Probably.”

“You would not have engaged in relations with Dr Banner.”

She snorts. Only Thor... “I guess not.”

“So you entered into this relationship because of my actions...”

Rain is starting to seep through the hoodie onto her t-shirt; she shifts uncomfortably. “Sure. Look, the thing is, we were both kind of sad people, for various reasons, when we met, and now I don't think either of us are.”

Thor's frowning pretty hard, and the rain is getting harder. She tugs her sleeves over her hands and crosses her arms over her chest again. “A lot of things have changed, Thor.”

“Yes.” He looks down at her, stilling frowning. “I was very surprised to find that Darcy and the Captain had formed a union.”

“That was pretty surprising,” she says, looking back towards Tony's living room. “Look, I'm going to go back inside, Thor, I'm gonna catch cold...”

She takes a step backwards and Thor reaches out and lays her hand on her shoulder. It's the first time they've touched in three years. She looks at the outstretched hand, then up at his face.

“What if he hurts you?” he asks.

“You hurt me.” Below the belt, but the truth.

Thor drops his head a little. “I meant physically,” he says quietly. "His alter-ego punched me, once."

"Really?" she asks, and he nods. Oh, that is _not_ funny, that is so not funny... “Well...” She holds her hands up. “I don't think he will, but if he does, it'll be my problem, won't it?”

“Yes...” Thor says, staring at her for a long moment. She's not sure exactly what they're waiting for, and starts trying to edge back to the door. “Do you love him?” 

“Uh...” She raises her hand to push wet hair from her face. Her sleeve smells like Bruce's body wash. “Um... I think that's for me and him to discuss.”

Thor nods.

“Do you... want to come inside?”

“No, I... I shall go.”

“Oh, okay, um...” She glances around and shifts from foot to foot. Thor looks at her for another moment, then steps away and, a second later, flies away. That never stops being weird. She wipes rain from her face and goes back inside, sighing happily at being back in the warmth.

“Jarvis?”

“Yes, Dr Foster?”

“Is Bruce still in his lab?”

“Yes, Dr Foster.”

She wipes her face again and heads to the elevator. “Thanks, Jarvis.”

“Certainly, Dr Foster.”

She goes down to the lab again, pulling off the hoodie as she opens the door, and hanging it on a hook by the door. She shakes out her arms and looks down at the soaked neck of her t-shirt. She hopes she doesn't get a cold, or worse. The flu was bad enough the first time, and she figures Bruce isn't going to look after her through another bout.

“Dr Foster,” Tony says quietly. She jumps and looks around at him.

“I didn't think you were in here. I thought...” She looks over to the couch, where Bruce is under a blanket, one arm hanging down and brushing the floor, asleep. “Oh, he's asleep.”

Tony gets up from the chair he was sitting in, sliding his phone into his jeans pocket. “I told Bruce I'd stick around and wake him up if anything happened. So, has something happened? Where's Thor?”

“He... went off to sulk, I think.”

Tony nods. “Okay. Now, look, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, because in about five minutes I'm going to offer you a job, but right now I'm going to ask you uncomfortable questions about your relationship with Bruce. Neither of us are going to like it.”

“Okay...” she says. “It's not really any of your business, though...”

He nods. “Absolutely. And believe me, I don't want to pry. Well, maybe I want to pry a bit, but not a huge amount. But the thing is, if Bruce is anything like me – and I figure he's more like me than any of us are comfortable with – then when he wakes up he's not going to tell you that he had a major meltdown after you went after Thor.”

She shifts on the spot. “What kind of meltdown?”

“Like a major self-confidence plummet. Like, 'nothing ever works out', 'everyone leaves me' type of meltdown.”

“Oh.”

He pulls a face. “Yeah. And I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, but if you're going to let him down, then do it now. Don't drag it out.”

“I'm...” She looks back at Bruce, whose steady snoring has been interrupted by a loud snuffle and short cough. She actually finds his snoring kind of soothing, most of the time. “I'm not going to let him down.”

Tony's eyebrows jump up. “Oh. Oh, okay. Then, carry on.”

“So what about the job?” He mentioned something about a job to her several months ago, but got distracted before finishing his pitch, and it felt awkward to bring it up again.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, you should come work in Science, we need more people at Stark who are smarter than me.”

She smiles. “Would you have offered me a job if I had... broken up with Bruce.”

He shrugs. “Yeah. But this way is much less awkward.”

“Can I think about it?”

“Sure.” He points at the door. “I'm gonna go.”

“Okay. Uh, thanks for...” She waves vaguely at Bruce.

“Hey, I was only being nosy,” he says, backing up to the door. “Call Jarvis if you need anything. Although you probably already know that, huh?”

“Yeah... Bye, Tony.”

The door slides open and he leaves with a wave.

She looks back at Bruce. Should she wake him up? He looks comfortable, and after what she saw on the news, he needs the rest. She guesses what she has to tell him can wait till morning. So her next question is, what should she do now? She could go home, or go up to his room, but she doesn't like the thought of him waking up alone after everything that's happened. 

She glances around the room, wrinkling her nose, then walks up to the couch and kneels down in front of it. She brushes his hair from his forehead, and he sighs, turning his head into her touch. She wonders if she could...

“Jarvis, if I moved Bruce a little, do you think I'd wake him?”

“Judging by how long he's been asleep, I believe he is in 'delta sleep'. I do not think you will wake him if you are careful.”

She nods and leans down, sliding her hands underneath his shoulders and pulling him him up a little. She picks up the pillow from under his head and sits down in the spot, puts the pillow on her lap, and eases Bruce back down. He frowns in his sleep for a couple of seconds, then reaches up and wraps his fingers around her thigh. She smiles and strokes his hair.

“Jarvis,” she says quietly, “can you turn the TV on with the volume right down?”

“Yes, Dr Foster,” Jarvis says, and the television comes on very quietly.

“Thanks, Jarvis.”

“Yes, Dr Foster.”

Bruce shifts in her lap, and she puts her hand on his chest, underneath the blanket. He settles.

-

It feels like there's something heavy on him. He's still half asleep, though, so maybe it's just that. Then it moves.

He opens his eyes and finds a leg stretched out by his face. He follows the line to a body wedged between his side and the back of couch, twisted in his blanket. His head is resting on her knee, and Jane – he can't actually make out her features in the dark without glasses on, but he knows it's her – has her head resting against his leg. Like some kind of sleepy sixty-nining. 

“Jarvis?” His voice comes out rough, and he clears it a little. “What time is it?”

“It is five thirteen am, sir.”

He blinks and swallows – his mouth is dry and tastes horrible, and he feels kind of sick, which is all about normal, post-Hulk. “Thanks.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jane huffs and shifts in her sleep, and Bruce tries to pull himself up a little as his back complains about the strange tangle they've got into, and they both move at just the wrong moment, Jane's knee connecting with his face, square on the part of his cheek that's still swollen from the root canal.

“Fuck,” he hisses, pressing his hand to his cheek.

Jane sucks in a loud breath and sits up. “Bruce?” she mumbles.

“Jarvis,” he says out of the corner of his mouth. “Lights, fifty percent.”

The lights fade in, and Jane frowns, looking at Bruce holding his face, then at her leg next to him. Her eyes go wide. “Did I just knee you in the face? Oh my God, that's the side you had the root canal!”

“It's okay,” he mumbles, but she's scrambling up and scooting towards him.

“First your glasses and now this...” she mutters. “I'm so sorry, Bruce.”

He looks at her worried face, actually looks and thinks about her being here, sleeping on the couch with him at five am. Not with Thor. Despite how much his cheek is throbbing, which is really _a lot_ he realises, he's getting this kind of light feeling in his chest.

“I think the inside of my cheek is bleeding,” he says, happiness kind of bubbling up and making him laugh, despite the pain.

She smiles back, looking a little confused. “Is it funny that I broke your glasses and hit you in the face?”

“No... Well, kinda.” He smiles as wide as he can without jostling his cheek. She crawls forward a little more and kisses him on the corner of his mouth. He drops his hand to hers and squeezes. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

She sits back and blinks at him. “It's my birthday,”she says, eyebrows slightly furrowed.

“It is,” he confirms, getting up. His hip isn't locked up any more, thank God. “I got you something.”

“Oh, you didn't...” She trails off as he gives her a look. “Okay, so maybe you did.”

“Mm.” He goes over to the fridge first and gets out another icepack. Jane makes a sympathetic noise and he smiles, wandering over to his desk to get the card and present out of the drawer. He brings them back to the couch and hands them to her. “Happy birthday. Sorry about my handwriting.”

She grins and opens the card, laughing at the goofy cartoon on the front. She reads what's inside for a long moment before looking up at him. “Uh, what does this bit say? I can't read it...”

“Oh, uh...” He takes the card back and holds it up close to his face. “It says, 'As instructed, I've been thinking about what to get you for three months, I hope you like it'.”

She sits up on her knees and leans over to point to the end of the sentence. “What's the squiggle at the end?”

“Oh, that's a smiley face... I thought it sounded a little stiff.”

She smiles indulgently at him and pats the couch cushion. He sits down beside her and watches as she holds the box up to her ear and shakes it. She glances at him and he smiles a little nervously – they didn't do much for Christmas; she got him a sweater and he got her book – so he wants to make this good, but he thinks it's probably just stupid.

She tears the paper off and opens the little box. She grins. 

He clasps his hands in his lap. “Do you like it?”

She holds up the necklace, the rocket ship pedant swinging back and forth. “I love it.”

“I know you don't really wear jewellery, but I saw it and I thought you might like it...”

She holds it out to him. “Put it on me?”

He puts the icepack down on the floor and nods. “Sure.”

She shifts around and gathers up her hair, and he loops it around her neck, fiddling with the clasp. Jane jumps a little when his cold fingers brush against her neck and he murmurs an apology. It takes minute of squinting and scraping his blunt fingernails against the tiny lever before he gets it. Jane puts her hand over the pedant and turns back to him.

“Thank you,” she says, and kisses him. He presses his hand to her back and returns the kiss until his cheek throbs insistently.

“Ah,” he mutters, reaching down for the ice pack again. “Sorry.”

“Hey, it was my fault,” she says, as he presses the icepack to his face. “You know what this means, right?”

“What?”

She tugs on her necklace and pulls a face. “I'm thirty four now.”

“Well, do you know what time you were born?”

“Um, four fifteen in the morning, I think?”

“Oh, then you are thirty four,” he says with a smile. “It's about five thirty now.”

“Ugh, so old,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Hey, try being forty two.”

She shakes her head. “No, thanks.”

He smiles a little, then swallows. “So, um. Thor...”

She takes a breath, her face falling a little. “Yeah...”

“What happened?”

“We, uh, argued. Well, maybe more like I yelled at him a while, and then he flew off.”

“Okay...”

She looks up at him, mouth twisting. “I think I... turned down a marriage proposal.”

He's starting to feel even more nauseous. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Well, he didn't propose-propose, but he said I could be his queen, so.” She shrugs and takes his hand, pressing her fingers into the centre of his palm and kneading it.

He manages to not say, 'you chose _this_ instead', but only just.

"Oh, and apparently you punched Thor once?" she adds.

He frowns. "I did?"

"Well, the Hulk did, at least."

"Oh." He smiles sheepishly. "Yeah, he did do that."

She laughs a little, wrapping her other hand loosely around his wrist.

"Do you like that Hulk punched him?"

She wrinkles up her nose and smiles at him. "Maybe a little," she confesses.

Bruce grins. “Hey, uh, wanna go up and get breakfast? Since we're awake and... bleeding, in some cases.”

“Sure.” She lets go his hand and picks up her card, carefully setting on his desk before heading to the door and grabbing his hoodie, which is hanging from a hook there. “You can't have it,” she says, pulling it around herself.

He shrugs, following her out. “Looks better on you anyway.”

-

He makes himself oatmeal and they chat in the huge, empty kitchen.

“One day I'll be able to eat solids again,” he mutters, alternating between spoonfuls of oatmeal and holding the icepack to his cheek.

“One day,” Jane agrees, wrapping her arms around his back and kissing his good cheek. He scoots around on his stool and presses their mouths together.

“Okay, _this_ is going to take some getting used to,” Tony announces, wandering into the kitchen, looking sleepy and slightly irritable. “What are you two doing up at this ungodly hour?”

Bruce pulls away from Jane and picks up the icepack again. “I dunno, I guess we both went to sleep pretty early. What are you doing up?”

“Pep's going to be back from Geneva soon,” he says. “What's the icepack doing out again, I thought the swelling had gone down.”

“Jane kicked me in the face,” Bruce replies.

“By mistake,” Jane adds, sitting back down beside him.

Tony rubs at his eye and wrinkles his nose. “Okay, I really don't need to know what you two get up to behind closed doors.”

“It's not like _that_ ,” Jane says, rolling her eyes.

Tony heads over to the coffee maker. “Well, whatever it's like, I don't want to know. But everything's good now?”

Bruce glances at Jane and nods. “Yeah. Uh, sorry about yesterday.”

Tony waves a hand, and puts a cup into the coffee maker. “Not a problem, I'm glad things worked out.”

Bruce smiles. “Thanks.”

Tony goes back to his coffee, humming under his breath as he pours it out. “So, I was thinking of having a family dinner this afternoon.”

“Whose family?” Bruce asks.

Tony rolls his eyes. “I meant it metaphorically. The Avengers and assorted extras. Like, Pepper and Darcy and you,” he says, pointing to Jane.

She blinks. “Is, uh, Thor going to be coming?”

“Well, it's not like I can call him on his cell, but if he's around, I'll invite him. I mean, who knows, he might have already gone home.”

“I don't know...” Jane murmurs, running her fingers through her hair. “It's actually my birthday today, so...”

“It is? Then even more reason to celebrate!”

Jane raises an eyebrow. “With my ex... whatever?”

Tony looks at Bruce. “What do you think?”

He shrugs. “It's not like we can stop you.”

“I didn't think that you could. Look, I figure it'll start around four, give Pepper some time to sleep off the jetlag. You don't have to come if you don't want to.”

Bruce shrugs again. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Tony repeats petulantly. He picks his coffee up and walks back over to the door. “I'm gonna go have a shower before Pepper gets back. Don't... _do_ anything on the countertops.”

Bruce turns his eyes skyward and Jane shifts in her seat, looking a little embarrassed. Bruce waits until Tony is out of the room before speaking again.

“You okay with maybe seeing Thor again today?”

“Are you?”

“Well...” He stirs the last of his oatmeal around the bowl. “It's probably not going to be avoidable long term anyway, so I guess we may as well get it over with, if you're okay with that.”

She wraps her arm and his shoulders and smiles. “Okay. If nothing else, it'll be an _interesting_ birthday.”

-

She can't be bothered to go home to get new clothes, but the t-shirt she's wearing smells kind of bad, so Bruce digs out his smallest sweater for her, and she jumps in his shower. When she gets out and uses his deodorant (thankfully he doesn't use really gross-smelling guy's deodorant), Bruce tugs off his own t-shirt to get in next. She catches a look at a long greenish bruise on one side of his ribcage in the mirror as he passes. It looks _really_ painful.

“Oh my God, Bruce, are you okay?”

“Huh?” he says. She points to his side wordlessly, and he looks down. “Oh yeah. Just a little parting gift from Hulk. It was about double the size yesterday, it should be gone by tonight.”

She frowns and he smiles, coming over to give her a quick hug. “I'm fine, I promise.”

“Okay...” she says, not feeling very convinced. Bruce kisses her on the forehead and starts undoing his fly. “But you'd tell me if something was wrong, right?”

His hands still and he looks back at her. “Like what?”

“Like...” She crosses her arms loosely over her chest and purses her lips for a second. “Feeling like no one cares about you?”

“Oh. Tony told you what I said?”

“Not really, he just said you had kind of a meltdown.”

He nods. “Yeah... I mean, I was upset and overtired, I didn't...” He rubs his eyebrow and sighs. “Hell, maybe I did mean everything I said.”

“What did you say?”

He shrugs. “Oh, I dunno, stuff about my shitty life. Feeling old. Missing teeth.”

“And how do you feel now?”

“Better. Still kind of hung up on the teeth thing, though.”

She chuckles. “Aw, Bruce, I don't care how many teeth you have.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Thanks. I'm going to try my best not to test that out, though.”

She gives him another hug. “Just... don't bottle everything up, okay?”

He looks at her, a funny smile on his face. “Okay. Same to you.”

“Okay,” she murmurs, bumping his shoulder.

-

By lunch time she learns something new about Bruce: he gets very hungry after a transformation.

“Hey, in the last twenty four hours, I've had half an energy bar, some Gatorade, and a bowl of oatmeal,” he says, grabbing more bread from the loaf. “Gimme a break.”

She leans over and steals a slice of salami from his plate. “Weren't you hungry earlier on?”

He shakes his head. “Sometimes it takes a little while to come on. I felt kinda nauseous earlier.”

She looks down at his plate piled high with sandwiches. “Not any more, though.”

He snorts. “No, not any more. But I figure, this is what it's like for Steve _all the time_ , so I'm getting off easy.”

“I hear you've been keeping things from us, doctors,” Pepper says from behind them. They both turn around to look at her.

“Hey, Pepper,” Bruce says, “how'd you sleep?”

“Oh, you know, I got a few hours, but of course being told we're having all sorts of company this afternoon stopped me from really relaxing.”

“Do you want to cancel?” Jane says. She glances at Bruce. “Because, I mean, I don't think we'd mind, would we?”

Bruce shakes his head. “I definitely wouldn't mind.”

Pepper waves them off. “Oh, it's fine, I got some sleep on the plane. Not that I need to tell Tony that, have to keep him a little nervous. Anyway, isn't it your birthday?”

Jane shrugs. “I never do anything for it.”

“Well, no birthday goes uncelebrated in this tower,” she says, walking over to fridge. “And anyway, how would Tony torture you two otherwise?”

Bruce laughs. “Yeah, that's what it's really about.”

Pepper gets a bottle of orange juice out of the fridge and grabs a glass. “I can neither confirm nor deny that.” She holds the bottle up to them and they both shake their heads. She puts it back and settles at the kitchen table. “So...”

“Mm...?” Bruce hums, slicing his sandwiches in half and looking at Jane in amusement.

“Well, you have to tell me something!” Pepper says.

Jane sits down at the table and Bruce follows. “There's not much to tell,” she says.

“You've been having a secret relationship for almost an entire year, there must be something to tell,” Pepper says. “Tony said it got started on one of our planes?”

Jane eats her slice of salami and nods. “Yeah... we got drunk...”

Pepper blinks. “Really?”

Bruce nods. “Yeah, we complained about, uh... life, and then we danced and then we... you know.”

“On one of the couches,” Jane says. “Sorry.”

Pepper nods. “Well, no offence, but I think I'm going to have the upholstery cleaned.”

“Sure,” Jane says.

Bruce takes a bite of his sandwich and grimaces. “Chew on the other side,” Jane says, patting him on the back.

Pepper looks at them, smiling. “Well, I'm glad everything worked out for the two of you, you deserve it. I'm going to go put my face on, I'll see you later.” 

She gets up, taking her orange juice with her. Jane frowns as she watches Pepper leave the room. She turns to Bruce. “She didn't _already_ have her face on?”

-

By the time Darcy and Steve arrive, and Jane has dispensed with the maternal birthday call, Bruce and Jane are in the main living room watching some crap on TV. Bruce bites into the chocolate bar he's holding and squeaks a little.

“You okay?” she asks. He grunts something vaguely negative and she wraps her arm around him, squeezing a little. He laughs and rests his head on her shoulder, and that is the precise moment that Darcy and Steve walk in the room.

Darcy's eyes narrow. “What's happening here?”

Bruce sits back up and glances at Jane. “What did Tony tell you?”

“To get our 'asses here at 4pm',” Steve says. “It was a short text message.”

Darcy arches an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Well...” Jane shifts a little, all eyes on her. “Thor and Tony kind of walked in on me and Bruce... doing something.”

Darcy's eyes go round. “Oh.”

“Yikes,” Steve mutters.

“So what happened?” Darcy prompts.

“Well, uh, me and Thor had kinda a fight and then he flew away and then...” She shrugs.

Steve smiles. “So you two...?”

Bruce nods. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

Steve's smile widens. “That's really great, I'm really happy for you guys.”

Bruce ducks his head and smiles, and Darcy gives Jane a look that says 'we're going to talk more about this later'.

“Why didn't you call me?” she asks

“I did, you didn't answer your phone.”

Darcy frowns and pulls her phone out of her pocket, thumbing at it for a second. “Huh,” she mutters. “Sorry, I was kind of distracted last night.” She tips her head towards Steve and he rolls his eyes.

“I wasn't even hurt,” he says.

“Traitor!” Tony calls from across the room, cutting off their bickering. Steve turns around and frowns at him, and Tony pulls a face at him and wanders off again.

“Why...?” Steve asks.

“'cause you didn't tell him about me and Jane,” Bruce says.

“But what does that make me a traitor to?”

Bruce shrugs.

“The bro code?” Darcy suggests.

Steve's eyebrows draw together. “The _what_?” 

It turns out that it's actually a lot of fun, spending time with everyone – even Barton, though Jane still thinks he's kind of odd. They eat and chat and Steve manages to outdo Tony on the crazy stories front, in his normal sweetly mild way. Even Bruce chips in a couple of stories about blowing things up in the physics labs at Harvard.

Jane and Darcy are telling everyone about some of their early adventures in New Mexico when Jarvis calls Tony away. Bruce is listening intently and Jane's having trouble keeping a smile off her face.

They're just getting to the good part when Tony walks back in. “Uh, hey, guys...” he says, and Jane is annoyed for a second at being interrupted, until she looks over her shoulder and sees Thor standing behind him.

“Fuck,” Darcy murmurs quietly.

The minutes that follow are probably the most awkward of Jane's entire life; everyone's kind of stuck in their spot, glancing at each other, except Bruce, who's just looking at the floor, until Steve jumps up and says hello to Thor. Thor looks at Jane for a few seconds longer, then at Steve.

“Steven, you and Darcy must tell me how this union came about.”

“Uh...” Steve looks back at Darcy, who gets up to join him. “Yeah, sure, of course.”

“But I want to know how the story ends!” Clint says.

Darcy looks back at him. “I burnt all our clothes and paid off the cop.”

-

Thor doesn't so much as glance Jane and Bruce's way for the rest of the afternoon. Pepper looks kind of mortified and Steve seems pretty nervous, but Jane guesses that this is the best they could expect.

“He's just going to keep ignoring us, isn't he?” Bruce murmurs, rolling his empty glass between his hands.

“It's better than the alternative,” Jane says.

Bruce's mouth twists. “Yeah... You wanna go somewhere else?”

She looks around at all the awkward groupings of people around the room and nods. “Yeah, come on.”

They take the elevator down a couple of floors and end up at one of the tower's huge windows. It's beginning to snow outside, snowflakes causing a brief blizzard as they fall, and they watch it in silence for a couple of minutes.

“Jane?” Bruce says eventually.

“Mmhm?”

“Are you sure?”

She looks at him. “About what?”

He scratches at the back of his head and sighs. “Everything?”

“Bruce...”

“'cause I wouldn't blame you if you weren't.”

“Bruce,” she repeats, and takes his hand. “I'm sure.”

His eyes flicker between her and the snow for a second before he smiles. “Okay. Okay. Uh... do you wanna... move in with me? I mean, I'll have to ask Tony, but... One day the apartments will be ready, so it's not just going to be the one room...”

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

He grins and leans over to kiss her, and that probably accounts for why they don't hear the footsteps coming up behind them.

“Dr Banner.” Thor doesn't speak particularly loudly, but his voice carries and they both jump at it.

Bruce looks at her wide-eyed for a second, then looks over Thor. “Uh, hey, Thor...”

Thor tips his chin up. “I would have words with you, between men.”

“Um...” Bruce murmurs.

Thor looks at her. “Jane, could you--”

“I'll stay.”

“ _Jane_.”

“I said I'm going to stay.”

Thor huffs, and it's almost funny, but she decides that laughing at this particular moment probably isn't the best idea. “Fine,” he says. “Dr Banner, I hope you know that I have the utmost respect for you.”

Bruce's eyebrows jump up. “Oh... yeah, absolutely. Same to you, Thor.”

“Mm. But I do not believe that you have behaved very honourably in this.”

Bruce nods. “Okay. I... I can see why you'd feel that way.”

“Yes,” Thor says, and crosses his arms over his chest. Bruce looks absolutely tiny compared to him. “However, as Tony has informed me, 'it is what it is'.”

Bruce glances as Jane, eyebrows going up a little. “Okay...”

“So, I am going to ask you just one question.” Thor eyeballs him for a moment. Jane is a little nervous at what's about to come out of his mouth. “Do you love her?”

“Thor!” Jane snaps. “I told you that that wasn't any of your business.”

“It's, it's okay,” Bruce mumbles. He rubs at his eyebrow, then his stubble, then tugs at his ear and slides his fingers into his hair. “I... yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Jane sucks in a breath as Thor nods.

“Good,” he says. “Do not let any harm come to her. By anyone's hand.”

“I won't,” Bruce says.

Thor nods once, very definite. “I'm going to rejoin the festivities. Perhaps I will see the two of you later.”

Jane nods jerkily. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Well, goodbye,” Thor says, taking a step back toward the elevator.

Bruce waves his goodbye and Jane mumbles something before turning back to the window. Bruce turns back as well, and she waits until she hears the elevator door open before speaking again.

“Did you--”

“Yeah. Yes.” He tugs the sleeves of his sweater over his hands and smiles at her.

She chews on her lip for a second, her stomach gurgling nervously. “Me too.”

“Yeah?”

She nods.

He grins and looks back out the window, squinting at the falling snow. “You know, I can't see a _thing_.”

She laughs, tension leaving her bit by bit. “I guess our first real date is going to be going to optician then, huh?”

-

“These glasses make me look like a nerd,” Bruce says, looking at himself in the mirror. The arms are still warm from where the guy adjusted them with his little machine; Jane was quite insistent that he get plastic frames.

“You are a nerd,” she says.

“Oh yeah,” he says, “I forgot.”

“Are they okay, sir?” the guy asks.

“You look really cute in them,” Jane says.

“They're great,” he says.

They leave the optician's and he looks around at everything, buildings, trees, people, the sludgy snow on the sidewalk; everything seems not just clearer, but brighter, too. These glasses are definitely better than those old drug store reading glasses.

He looks at her and grins. “Wow, so _that's_ what you look like.”

Jane rolls her eyes and wraps her gloved hands around his. “Oh, by the way, I accepted Tony's job offer this morning.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I ran into him in the kitchen while you were in the shower. We high-fived.”

“Okay, great.”

“He said he was going to split us up, though, otherwise we'd never get any work done.”

Bruce raises his eyebrows. “There's always lunch break.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I riffed off the Thor 2 prelude comics for Jane and Thor's conversation, which I kind of liked for Jane's mini-arc, though obviously this fic is completely AU now.


End file.
